A mystery shop of Croydon's GPs on registration

Healthwatch Croydon conducted a mystery shopping exercise where staff and volunteers rang up all of Croydon's GP practices (57) three times over a five week period in November to December 2018 to ask how they could register with their practice. They assessed the waiting time to pick up, staff attitude, staff helpfulness and accuracy in line with the standards of the NHS Primary Care contract that

states that anyone can registered without a request for identification, and in the case of homeless people, without an address or formal identification.

They found the average waiting time was 2 minutes. However, there were two that had a hold time of 11 minutes. 68% of practice’s attitude were rated positively and 70% of practices were seen as helpful. 77% of practice’s did not give the national standard information that they could just fill in a form without any identification. While 58% found themselves consistent with what they said on the phone, only 7% had placed accurate information on their websites.

These are the recommendations from this report: GPs should meet national standard in registering people without any ID; GPs should make the process of registering easier, applying the well-written and clear information as shown on NHS website to their own websites; GPs should clearly show that people with temporary or no fixed address can register under their GPs practice address.

As a result of their report, NHS Croydon Clinical Commissioning Group responded that they would recirculate information around registering patients, and ensure GP reception staff are aware of the correct process to improve consistency across the borough, and promote the use of the additional appointments available at our extended access hubs and ensure that these are also available for homeless patients.