Shiregreen Medical Centre Patient Appointment Survey Results

Please see below for the results of our recent Patient Appointment Survey. I’m delighted over 600 of you took time to complete this for us, your opinions are important to us. With over 7,700 patients we cannot take everyone’s view into consideration but we feel this sample of your opinion is significant enough (7% of patients responded) and representative of the general view of our patient population.
We will continue to gather data over the coming months to enable us to look at ways in which we can facilitate some changes.
In summary this is what you told us

1. 22% of you LIKE the current appointment booking system, whilst over 73% of you didn’t like it. This matches the feedback we already had from you either verbally or written in complaints and we will look at different ways of working that may be more preferable
2. 90% of you found it difficult to get through to us on the phone. NHSE have instructed all practices to upgrade their phone to iCloud telephony – this allows for a queue and a call back system. We have already invested in this upgraded system a number of years ago but are looking into the call back facility which may be useful for you
3. Over 92% of you said you would prefer to be able to call us at a more convenient time for you to book appointments. We will look into different ways of working that may enable you to do this, but at the same time we have to consider actual data which relates to patients non attending pre booked appointments – the majority of patients who fail to attend appointments are to appointments that are prebooked. We cannot continue “Did not attend” rates to increase as this wastes appointments and time other patients could have had with clinicians
4. Over 70% of you said you are highly likely/ likely use a web link or app to book appointments with us. Whilst this could never be the only way to book appointments if the majority of our patients could use this type of system it would free up the phone lines for those who aren’t able to or prefer not to use this technology. We are currently trialling a similar system for contacting us through “Patient Triage”. We will look at the results of the survey and the outcome of the trial to determine how we can develop this
5. Over 50% of you said you would or would sometimes provide more information to the receptionist so your query could be dealt with quicker by a GP. Again, we will look at systems and procedures that may enable this for you.
6. 95% of you said you would prefer more options to book appointments in advance. We will look into different ways of working that may enable you to do this, but at the same time we have to consider actual data which relates to patients non attending pre booked appointments – the majority of patients who fail to attend appointments are to appointments that are prebooked. We cannot continue “Did not attend” rates to increase as this wastes appointments and time other patients could have had with clinicians
7. Almost 60% of you said you were aware of the additional services and appointments available to you at local hubs, that’s great to hear as these services are integral to primary care and the GP/Patient offer in 2023
8. Over 63% of you said you were aware that 111 services were available at any time and when we have no remaining appointment availability for the day. Whilst we see resistance from some patients to use 111 due to the misconceptions of what it is for, I’m pleased that most of you understand the services 111 offer.
   So thank you to everyone who completed this snapshot survey for us. It will enable us to look into improving our services in the areas that matter most to you. I will keep you updated on further findings and actions we will take as a result.