Sandy Lane Surgery - Progress Against Priority Areas and Action Plan 2016

Sandy Lane Surgery - Progress against priority areas and Action Plan 2016

Online Access / This was a priority area last year and the reception team had a target to register patients for online access. This was very successful and almost doubled the number of patients who are registered. We also began to actively encourage new patients to register for online access as they registered with the practice. This year we intend to continue to focus on this area and will introduce text messages to encourage registration. The practice has also opened up access to medical records online. This was initially piloted with members of the patient participation group and is now available for other patients on request as appropriate.
The system that the practice uses for online access is a national system and the practice has no control over the high level of security required for this service. With regard to the number and variety of appointments that are available for online booking there are a number of restrictions due to variation in skill mix within the nursing team and variation with length of appointments required for chronic disease reviews. We will continue to review and expand this as appropriate
Opening hours / The practice has recently increased its opening times and is now open both Saturdays and Sundays for most weeks during the year. This has been publicised on the website and in practice for patient’s information. We are going to text patients to inform them of the new weekend opening.
In the survey some patients had indicated that they would like the surgery to be open in an evening. This has been discussed but due to manpower issues this is currently not possible. Hopefully the additional opening times on Sundays will mitigate this. We will continue to review opening times and appointment availability
Appointments / The practice recognises that appointment availability has at times been difficult during the last year. There has been an increased demand for appointments and difficultieshave arisen recruiting permanent doctors and obtaining locum cover. Unfortunately there is a national problem with recruitment and the practice has experienced this over the last year. Taking this into consideration the results of the survey were not significantly different to the previous year which was very positive.
63% of patients reported that they were able to see a doctor on the same day or in the next two weekdays which is an excellent achievement. However, fewer patients were able to see the doctor they preferred most or a lot of the time which again is understandable due to the recruitment problems that the practice has experienced. On a positive note the practice has now managed to successfully recruit two new partners and an additional permanent salaried doctor which should stabilise the practice and ease the pressure on appointments. Locum doctors are used to provide cover during peak holiday periods.
The practice are constantly reviewing supply and demand and making the necessary adjustments to try to meet the needs of patients.
Customer care / Unfortunately the number of patients who felt that they received a professional and friendly welcome and that the information provided by the reception team was helpful had decreased compared to last year. The practice had previously done a lot of work to improve their customer service and therefore this result is disappointing.
Customer care will be set as a priority area to address this year. The office manager has been given this as an objective and has recently attended an external customer care training course. The rest of the team received additional customer care training in May 2016. The practice undertake individual annual staff appraisaland has identified improved customer care an objective for all staff.
The practice has recently had a new telephone system with the facility to record all calls. The office manager is auditing a random sample of these calls on a weekly basis to identify any training needs.
The majority of areas relating to seeing a doctor and a nurse at the surgery saw an increase in the positive responses which is very pleasing.
SMS Text messaging / This was a priority area for the practice to work on last year.
Practice staff have been checking patients mobile phone numbers at every contact to ensure that our records are up to date. All reception staff have received training in the use of SMS text messaging and are using this facility to send messages from the doctors to patients rather than telephoning them. We have also started to use the messaging facility to promote campaigns that the practice are holding e.g. Dementia Awareness event and Men’s Health Awareness Event.
We are still considering the use of SMS messaging to send out patient invitations and recall for their annual review appointments but as yet have been unable to find a robust system.
Unfortunately the use of SMS messaging for appointment reminder service does not seem to have significantly reduced the number of patients who do not attend their appointments.