Action plan for Westfield Road Surgery following theresults of our patient survey (National and local)

The plan detailed below has been drawn up after consultation with our Patient Participation Group (PPG) in September 2016.

Our National survey results showed that we performed well in terms of patient satisfaction with our Doctors and Nurses (88%) and all the other services we provide but we received a score of 53% for ‘patients’ ease of getting through on the telephone’ and a score of 64% for ‘the overall experience of making an appointment’. We wish to address this situation by improving our telephone access and making it easier for our patients to make an appointment.

It is fair to say that we have had more comments about our availability of appointments of late. We feel this is due to the fact that we have had to take on an additional 500 patients over the last three years (an increase of nearly 10%) and with 100 of those being in the last 5 months. The resultant additional workload has placed a strain on our services and has resulted in us being stretched to meet the additional demand. Although we realise that Milton Keynes is an ever expanding City our problem has been exacerbated by two large practices nearby being allowed to close their lists.

To address this problem we have approached our local CCG and NHS England and asked for a temporary closure of our list. We have had an initial application turned down and are in the appeal stage at the moment. We have yet to meet with the officers of NHS England.

We have looked at the possibility of purchasing a new telephone system and have had consultations with a supplier but we are not sure this will answer any of our problems as this does not deal with the demand of an increased number of patients.

We will look at the way in which we organise and issue appointments. We will study other surgeries and compare their methods with ours. This will assess if we can deliver our service in a smarter way. We currently offer 452 GP and Minor illness appointments each week. We also offer 297 nurse appointments each week. However, of these appointments an average of 29 each week are booked but not attended by patients and so they are wasted. We will also look at reducing these non-attenders. We have a text reminder facility which helps but we need to undertake further patient education in an effort to reduce this.

Although funding has been withdrawn by Milton Keynes Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) we have agreed to continue the additional work we do towards reducing unplanned hospital admissions as we see it as good practice. This entails providing those vulnerable patients who are more likely to have an unplanned hospital admission with a dedicated telephone number and the ability to have an appointment or telephone consultation at short notice. In order to achieve this additional GP input we employed Carole our minor illness nurse as part of the solution.

As far as premises are concerned we wish to convert room 5 into another completely clinical room by changing the wash hand basin and installing a ‘no touch’ hand washing facility.

We also wish to replace the carpets in the waiting room, reception area and rooms 6 and 7 with non-slip washable flooring.

The above premises improvements depend on the availability of funds.

Emma Weatherley
Practice Manager.
September 2016.