Comment by veltas
That's the case where I live, there's only a few surgeries I'm allowed to register at and they all have this problem. I think there is some manipulation of statistics the surgeries do to prevent more being created, and to hide the difficulty in getting an appointment. For example rather than having 6 month waiting list, they don't make appointments more than a few weeks in advance, so you just can't get an appointment and it looks like nobody waits more than a few weeks. I think while surgeries are allowed to do this we'll never understand the real capacity.
When you say "surgeries", are you using what I understand to be the UK word for the US phrase "doctor's offices"?