Enter and view: Abbey Wood Surgery
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Healthwatch Greenwich conducted an announced enter and view visit to Abbey Wood Surgery, on 27 June 2017, as part of their scheduled visits to health and social care services to observe service delivery, talk to service users and make recommendations where needed. Abbey Wood Surgery is a well-established GP practice with the latest CQC report of ‘Good’. The representatives prepared a questionnaire and, on their visit, collected feedback from 12 individuals.
HW found the surgery to be clean with a good size waiting room but with a somewhat tired décor. There were ramps and level access available with an electronic check in available (but it was not working at the time of the visit). The reception area offered some level of privacy but not much as there were two windows next to each other to talk to the receptionist from. The reception staff was welcoming and very attentive. There was a suggestion box for feedback from the patients and a poster about the surgery’s PPG. Most people were happy with the online booking system, especially the app was considered very good, but it wasn’t advertised enough. Overall, the feedback about the surgery was ‘Good’ to ‘Excellent’ with patients feeling involved and informed in their care.
HW Greenwich made a few recommendations some of which were as follows:
Advertise online appointment booking system in the waiting area and on the screen available; show waiting times for appointments in the waiting area or notify patients when the check-in at reception to manage expectations; it would be good to display the names (possibly including photos) of staff at the surgery; information about translation services and information being available in other formats should be displayed; keep all information displayed current, up to date and neat; it would be good to introduce a ‘you said, we did’ display to show what impact the comments left by patients and the work of the PPG.
The service provider responded to the recommendations taking on board some (looking into purchasing a hearing loop), but otherwise explaining the rationale behind not implementing the rest as they already do it or it wasn’t feasible.