It’s the weekend again and time to find out what comments our patients have left on the Patient Satisfaction Survey and the Friends and Family Test. Those of you who read these posts will know we read all the comments and aim to use them to allow us to improve our services further. Some suggestions are great, others are worth considering, and some, after consideration, can’t be implemented. But all your views are valuable, worthy of sharing and will be considered. We thank all our patients for taking the time to share their thoughts with us.
How likely are you to recommend our GP practice to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment?
Likely
What are we doing particularly well?
Helpful receptionist
What do you feel we can improve on and how?
Online appointments. Be able to make or reschedule appointments with the receptionist
We’re glad this patient is happy with our services overall. However, they have found something missing. The ability to book appointments online and the possibility of booking or rescheduling an appointment if the one offered is inconvenient with the receptionist. So, why don’t we offer this currently?
- If people book an appointment online, it isn’t possible to perform an assessment of need first. This means that they could have booked with someone who is less suitable to deal with their problem, or even booked an unnecessary appointment. To ensure that people receive the appointment they need with the most suitable person or service, we have disabled online booking.
- Allowing the receptionist to book doctor’s appointments directly doesn’t allow for an assessment of need. Although some practices ask their receptionists to perform this, we feel it is safer to ask a clinician to do this instead.
- Unfortunately, the amount of appointments available is limited and it isn’t possible to reschedule an appointment for another time. If the time given doesn’t suit, then it may be necessary to contact i-Heart instead. You can, however, inform the receptionist of times that are more (or less) suitable for an appointment when she places you on the assessment of need list. We can’t promise to give you what you ask for, but we can look at your request and try to match this with the availability. Where we can, we will take this into account. But our availability doesn’t always allow this.
How likely are you to recommend our GP practice to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment?
Extremely likely
Can you tell us why you gave that response?
Dr I saw was very thorough and helpful
Do you think the practice has improved in the last 12 months?
Yes
What do you feel we can improve on and how?
No changes needed at this point.
Another happy customer.
Had my bloods done without any issues. Always prompt and done with care.
Fed up with ringing up and no appointments left something needs to change
This patient is obviously very disappointed with us. We never appear to have availability when this patient rings us. Something needs to change. We assume the patient means we should increase the number of appointments we have available. Unfortunately, that is not really a possibility.
To increase the number of appointments, we need to have more clinical staff (doctors, advanced nurse practitioners, physician associates, nurses, nursing associates, and healthcare assistants).
To increase the number of clinical staff, there needs to be more clinical staff available to recruit and more funds available to pay their wages. But even more so, there needs to be more space to put those people. Our clinical (and administration) space is at full capacity with a lot of hot-seating going on.
History has shown that if the capacity is increased, demand will closely follow and increase too. We will simply never have enough appointments available to satisfy the demand. However much we would like to.
It would help the nurses if when doctors get information from/about patients they put the proper information into that patient’s notes, or records them in an online account
We are not entirely certain what this relates to. Often letters from the hospital don’t arrive at the surgery until a few weeks (sometimes even months) after they have been seen there. Discharge summaries and A&E attendances usually are quicker. This may have been related to test requests as there is a mention of an online account. We apologise if we didn’t record things properly or fast enough.
Couldn’t get through (35 mins on phone) had to drive to surgery. Receptionist when I called in person was first class. Nurse administering flu vaccinations over and above ! Just hate the new system in place and such a waste of telephone time/money listening to messages prior to trying to make contact!!!!!!
A bit of a mixed picture here. Patient is happy with the service provided, but hates the telephone system which keeps the patient waiting for a long time. The patient also believes they shouldn’t have to listen to messages before making contact.
Yesterday, I was fortunate to have the two loveliest healthcare ladies , Jackie and Ellie .
The service these ladies deliver is top class and I felt that my concerns were dealt with brilliantly and professionally.
Both ladies have great emotional intelligence x
So pleased to hear this patient had a good experience. We agree both ladies are an asset to the practice and will pass on the message for their attention.
None of questions applicable,was given appointment, the Dr was lovely, but I think its wrong that the receptionist can over rule Dr when he tells you to make another appointment, she says cannot,” He’s just a locum” so wrong
We believe there must have been a miscommunication here. It is likely this patient saw a new locum who did not yet know how the practice system worked. All appointments should go through the assessment of need pathway, although some are doctor initiated. The ones that are doctor initiated will need to be requested by the doctor and not the patient at their request. If a GP feels the patient needs a review, then the GP should request this. However, a new locum may not have realised this.
Absolutely amazing service from my doctor’s can’t fault them at all with anything!
Calling the surgery is still impossible, u have to go in person, Having said that Dr Bell is probably the best doctor i have ever seen in my life, An outstanding doctor.
This patient is not the only patient dissatisfied with the telephone system. We are not satisfied with it either (and are uncertain there is a perfect system), but feel it has improved from the old system. We continue to look for improvements.
Haven’t had a problem seeing anyone at surgery. I’ve always seen Gemma who is lovely to see and who always puts me at ease
Had phone call to take my daughter for her yearly health check with the nurse,had her bloods done and blood pressure.Very helpful with my daughter she’s special needs .so very happy with her consultation.
We are pleased to hear these patients were happy with the service they received.
Needed to say I was going to be late for my appointment I was trying to call which took about 20 minutes for the call to be answered,i I was trying to inform the nurse i was going to be late so she could see another patient instead of waiting for me but i was a minute away from the surgery by the time call was answered which must be frustrating for the medical staff.
We are pleased to hear the patient tried to inform us of the delay and are not sure how we can work around this problem. Although it might have been possible to use the online consultations for this instead, we might still not have seen the message in time to act on it. We thank the patient for persisting in trying to inform us.
