Our Patient Satisfaction Survey results this week.
Help us to improve our services
And what a week it’s been. Most of the week passed as normal, but Friday was a real nightmare that saw many GP practices affected by a clinical system outage. Many other areas were also affected globally, banks, shops, and airports to name a few. We hope everything will be back to normal again on Monday but understand access to the clinical system remains limited. EMIS prioritises access to consultations, medication, and the appointment book in the first instance. This means that documents (letters from and to consultants), searches and many other parts of the programme are currently unavailable. This will continue to have an impact on how we work. Despite all these challenges we are determined to do the best we can for our patients.
And now, it’s time to have a look at the comments left by our patients this week.
My appointment on this occasion was pre book. My appointment was with the Nurse she gives me the date for my next visit.
It seams there is not enough doctors now for the volume of patients so it is always difficult to see a doctor immediately. This triage is also very frustrating plus getting through to reception is a long and frustrating experience.
We are now in a ridiculous situation in the UK with plenty of available GPs. Still, the funding primary care has been given is ringfenced for the additional roles (physician associates, paramedics, pharmacists, nursing associates and other roles), and can’t be used for GP recruitment. The funding for staff has been removed from the GP practices and put in the PCN (primary care network, which in Barnsley contains all the GP practices) instead. This means GP practices no longer have any funding to recruit further GPs, even if they would have the space to house them (which is also rather limited).
Regarding the phone situation, we hope this will soon be much improved. Our new phones will be installed on 12 August and the new system should be live from 13 August. We can’t wait and hope this will bring much-needed improved access to the practice.
The nurse I saw for my annual review was very professional, friendly, informative and caring.
Thanks for the service that my
Brother received
Very Happy with all staff your doing a great job
I had an appointment with Jackie, she is very kind and covered everything for me. Definitely felt listened to and understood.
And now it’s time to have a look at the results from the Friends and Family Test this week:
| How likely are you to recommend our GP practice to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment? | Neither likely nor unlikely |
|---|---|
| Can you tell us why you gave that response? | It is still so hard to get a GP appointment. I am aware other practices are the same so I wouldn’t advise anyone to swap and change. |
| Do you think the practice has improved in the last 12 months? | For appointments to see a GP I would say no, no change. When managing to get through between 8-8.30 I am still been told I would have to see ‘out of hours’ Doctor’s???? I am always worried when I feel unwell and need to be seen as I know what problems I will be up against. |
| What are we doing particularly well? | The Nursing side of the Practice I think are amazing. Luckily my problems have been dealt with by the Nurse. I have also been lucky to see the same person. She is very informative, understanding, gentle, she makes you feel so at ease and explains anything you are struggling to understand. She is a credit to her profession. |
| What do you feel we can improve on and how? | Definitely more available appointments. When you feel ill you shouldn’t feel stressed further by not daring to ring your GP Practice, or having to wait until after 7pm so see a Doctor you don’t know. |
Although most patients will agree we need more appointments so that everyone who wants to see a doctor, can see a doctor, this is not what research shows is the best thing. Interestingly, patient satisfaction appears improved if the available appointments are of a longer duration so that their problem can be addressed within one appointment rather than over several appointments. Some practices only offer 10 appointments per GP daily, but those appointments are 20-30 minutes long. The patient satisfaction surveys they did actually showed greater satisfaction than before they made this change.
Research also shows that GPs should aim to see a maximum of 25 patients daily to be most effective in their care. We try to keep to this guidance to ensure the best possible care for our patients. The only way we could increase the number of available appointments would be by increasing the number of GPs. This is difficult for several reasons. We don’t have the space to house the extra GPs. We don’t have the funding to recruit those extra GPs. Most available GPs prefer to work locum shifts which provides them with flexibility and an increased salary compared to a partner or a salaried GP.
This concludes our Patient Satisfaction Survey and Friends and Family Test results for this week. Apologies for posting this a day later than usual but I could do with a rest day after the trouble that hit us on Friday. Thank you once again to all the patients who take the time to provide their feedback. It is much appreciated.