MEMBERSHIP OF THE GROUP
At the Group’s AGM in NovemberJulie Foster was again elected as the Chairman for the coming year. The Group are looking forward to working with Julie during her term of office.
Elizabeth Grigg was elected as the Deputy Chair for the group and Susan Prior will again take on the key role of Secretary.
Details of the full membership of the Group can be found on the Notice Board at each surgery. We meet every other month usually on a Tuesday commencing at 6 pm. The group is keen to welcome new members and would especially like to hear from patients who have young families, are young adults or are involved in the management of their own long term health conditions to help the practice with service redesign.
We are keen to encourage new members onto the Group and would like to hear from anyone who is passionate about the NHS as a whole and would be interested in helping their local practice as a valued critical friend to improve and develop their services for local patients.
If you would like to contact the group at any time, you can email them at or write to the Patient Group Chairman, Mrs Julie Foster, c/o the surgery address.
AGREED PRIORITIES FOR THE COMING YEAR
The Group believes that it can best serve the practice and its patients by further developing its ‘critical friend’ role, concentrating on local issues and challenges.
Priority Area 1
In order to support the practice we have agreed that we need to help increase patient awareness of the challenges faced by the
NHS nationally and inform patients how this affects their practice locally. Working with the Practice we hope to be able to give clear, balanced and easy to understand explanations of why patients have seen a change in the care delivered by the practice in recent years and what challenges are faced day to day, not only by the patient, but also by the practice team. We are planning a series of Open Forum discussions groups with the practice for patients to attend – look out for our flyers.
Priority Area 2
The group will work to identify and encourage potential new members, with a view to diversifying the existing membership to better reflect the profile of the practice patient demographics.
Priority Area 3
Availability of appointments continues to be a theme of concern with patients for a variety of user groups. The group will work with the practice over the coming months to consider how care can be better delivered to patients with long term conditions.
FAMILY & FRIENDS TEST
This quick and simple tool,based on two questions,helps the practice evaluate over the longer term how patients rate the service they provide. Thank you to everyone who helped the patient group by completing this questionnaire at the recent ‘flu jab sessions.
The practice routinely analysesthis feedback and sharesthe findings with the Patient Group. The following table summarises feedback received to date this year. This feedback helped us to work with the practice to identify and agree areas for improvement.
How likely are you to recommend your GP Surgery to friends and family if they needed similar care or treatment? / Number / %Extremely likely / 349 / 75
Likely / 104 / 22
Neither likely nor unlikely / Unlikely / Extremely Unlikely / 12 / 3
Don’t know / 0 / 0
The Practice’s Friends and Family Test score at 72 is very good. (This is based on the national NHS Net Promoter Score range of between -100 and +100)
What is your main reason for choosing that option? / Number / %Level of confidence in the clinician / 240 / 52
Support given by surgery staff / 123 / 26
Quality of information available / 10 / 2
Ease of accessing the service / 54 / 12
Surgery facilities and premises / 30 / 6
Other (see below) / 8 / 2
Mostly the free text commentsrelated to positive statements about the level of care. Negative feedback comments have been summarised in the following table.
Negative responses from Question 2 / Number / %Level of confidence in the clinician / 3 / 0.6
Support given by surgery staff / 2 / 0.4
Quality of information available / 1 / 0.2
Ease of accessing the service / 5 / 1.1
Surgery facilities and premises / 1 / 0.2
WHAT HAS BEEN DONE TO RESPOND TO CONCERNS
The patient group agreed with the practice’s report to the group that there are no obvious areas for concern, with responses from those who would not recommend the service being just a small percentage of the total opinions expressed, at just 3% of the overall feedback received this year.
The group feels the most common area of concern for patients isthe 'ease of accessing our services' and in particular the patients choice of GP. This year the group worked with the practice on the introduction of a new Acute Care Team service to assist patients needing to see a clinician the same day. We will work with the practice team over the months to review the service provided for patients with long term conditions, with a view to improving the service accessibility for ongoing routine care.
HOW TO GIVE YOUR FEEDBACK
You can always complete this feedback online through the practice website or look out for the postcards and post boxes at both surgeries. This information is important so please take a few moments to complete these slips when you visit the surgery.
YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED
The following items are in response to the issues raised by patients through recent feedback.
Why do I have to wait so long to see my Doctor?
Many of you often express concerns about the availability of appointments with your chosen doctor when you want to see them. This is not a simple question to answer and there are a number of factors that contribute to this problem which we will try to explain. This includes understanding why the old traditional family doctor’s model has changed.
If all appointmentsprovided were used appropriately, there would not be a problem in getting an appointment to see your GP. There is currently a disparity between supply and demand, but much of the demand is either inappropriate oris appropriate but not dealt with appropriately. A large number of routine appointments continue to be wasted unnecessarily because people simply do not turn up. If you are not going to use your appointment please contact the surgery and cancel it so that another patient may make use of it. Wereally cannot afford to let appointments go to waste.
Each doctor can only physically offer a certain number of appointments each working day. The receptionist will always try and offer a suitable appointment with your doctor of choice to meet your needs, but some GPs do not work on a full time basis and they all provide appointments at both Williton Watchet surgeries. As a patient you can choose to see a specific doctor, but you need to appreciate that this may involve a longer wait until that particular doctor is able to see you.
The surgery continues to struggle with the high demand for appointments. This is partly because the practice has a growing ‘aged’ population. As we live longer our health needs become more complex. The high elderly population means there are more patients with multiple chronic health needs, more patients at risk of potential hospital admissions and a higher than average demand for home visits over a large rural area.
This all places strain on the system, but the bottom line is, we,the patients,are going to the doctors’ surgery more often than we used to.
WILLITON & WATCHET SURGERIES PATIENT GROUP