Patient Feedback Evening 2024

The Branch of Appreciation 

The key themes were:

• Appreciation for whole team and all interactions
• Approachable open organisation 
• Appreciation for our building and facilities and how clean and well looked after it is
• Appreciation for wider facilities including the café 
• The wider opportunities we offer for preventive health and our holistic approach to care
• Felt out new appointment system was working well
• Appreciation for appointments being on time
• Had experienced good continuity with GP
• Speed of attention once request is received was praised
• Felt our repeat prescriptions worked well

“Every occasion with GP, Nurse or other members of the team has been gentle and understanding and Ive had continuous care.  Excellent service”

Our reflections

• We really appreciated hearing what was working well.  
• Feedback on the evening was also very positive with several comments about how much more people had got out of it than expected.  
• We noted that there were great experiences in areas such as continuity of care and with prescriptions.  But we also had feedback in other conversations that this had been an area of frustration.
• We had lots of positive feedback that people would like to see this happening again.

Our actions

• We have agreed with our PPG to try and hold a patient feedback event annually. 

The Branch of Small Steps

Conversations around this branch were based on the question “what small steps could we take to improve the practice?” We received a variety of responses to this. We have summarised these where they have not been covered elsewhere in feedback.

The key themes were

• Enabling patients to receive a call back at an earlier stage in the telephone queue
• Seeing another doctor sooner, rather than waiting for the continuity doctor
• Having a text response to confirm my appointment request has been made and is being dealt with
• It would be good to know who I am talking with on the phone
• My appropriate title wasn’t used, I’d like this to be considered
• More drop in health connections opportunities

Our reflections

• We were pleased as some of these conversations enabled quick and easy solutions to be put in place.

Our actions 

• We will do more work with our team to ensure our commitment to “Hello my name is” is in place as we have committed to this as a practice.
• We will also remind the team about checking appropriate titles are used in communication as we appreciate how important this is. 
• We immediately changed our call back function following this feedback.  This now happens at position 5 in the queue. It was previously set at position 10.
• We completely agree that a text message service linked to our appointment system would really help.  We have been lobbying our provider to do this and we are hopeful this will be introduced soon.
• We appreciate patients may wish to see a GP earlier and not wait for their continuity GP.  We aim to offer choice where we can. 
• We are also creating a set of FAQs to help patients with questions about how things work.  We will put this on our website. 

The Branch of Connections

The conversations around this branch were based on the question “when have you felt most connected to those working at the practice

The key themes were:

• Feeling listened to and understood  
• “I have listened to, connected with PPG , had opportunities in surveys to give feedback” 
• Feeling connected to individual GPs and Staff
• It was lovely to see how many clinicians and support staff were mentioned personally on so many of the leaves.  
• Struggling with connection and exploring why
• We also heard from someone who didn’t feel connected and we really appreciated having the chance to explore why and were grateful the evening had created an opportunity for connection

Our Reflections and Actions

• We will continue to work with building connection and we hope further working with our team on “Hello my name is” will be one step to support with this. 

The Branch of Frustration and The Branch of Wants 

Several of the comments on these branches overlapped, so we are looking at these jointly

Key Themes  

• Klinik improvements (our newly introduced appointment system)   While we had many positive comments some of you commented you would like a shorter form and it for be easier to capture complex requests
• You asked about having a clearer treatment plan after an appointment
• You would like a greater range of online booking options for chronic disease 
• You would like appointments to be quicker than 2 weeks 
• You would like different forms of communication - we have a request for email over text for example
• You would like more access in the evening and weekend eg getting a blood test at a weekend or evening
• You would like specific email communication as a preferred form of communication over text Preference for forms of communication (text preferred as more secure)
• You would like more digital support 
• Not knowing how to contact practice - wanted to use email, use online form to ensure information is structured to act on it and that it is secure, ensure it goes to right place  (create a general FAQ page and include information on this) 
• Prefer to speak to a person when booking
• We were asked to communicate why waiting rooms are empty and what our GPs are doing 
• Would like it to be easier to see your named GP regarding Long Term Conditions  

Frustrations

Medication specific

• You spoke about intermittent used repeats  - dropping of your repeat list of medication and wanted to know why 
• Access to repeat prescriptions being difficult without NHS app
• Concerns were expressed about when my prescription is ready  
• Delays in urgent requests for medications and not knowing where to access urgent care

Other 

• You were concerned about the growth of Frome and access to care 
• You wanted to know more about GP specialities when booking appointments

Reflections

• We found being able to have conversations about some of these things really helpful as it gave us an opportunity to explain why we operate in certain ways, what some of the limitations we have are and also understand where we need to communicate more.  A good example of this was the question of specialities when we were able to explain that our GPs are trained to have a good overview of all conditions and that they will refer to the hospital and secondary care for when a specialist is needed. 

Our Actions

• We will create a specific set of FAQs around medications and appointment bookings to help with understanding
• We will also use some of the questions we received to formulate our FAQs
• We found it helpful for example to explain when asked about our waiting rooms appearing empty.  It was helpful to explain that our building is at full capacity and waiting rooms are empty as we have worked hard to have a really efficient appointment systems where patients are not waiting once they are called in 
• We will also share feedback with our commissioners.  We have for example invested heavily in Digital support for patients and feel continued investment is crucial as your feedback confirmed
• We have also tried to get blood collections on a Saturday and later in the day as we realise this is really helpful for working patients and would provide a much better service
• We will work with the Urgent Treatment Centre (UTC) on joint patient communications to on when it is best to visit the GP and when the UTC
• We also agreed we would work on communicating to patients on “how to get the most out of your appointment”

Sowing the seeds of new ideas

We used the soil around the tree for new ideas.  Many of the thoughts shared were wider system suggestions which we will feedback. 

• Would like to see larger font on patient medication and prescriptions 
• Would like to see hospital blood results on NHS app
• Better access to mental health support and provision locally