Appointment systems at Southwark GP practices

Healthwatch Southwark created this "Appointment systems at Southwark GP practices - are they working?" report to look at the experiences of local people with appointment booking systems to see their GP.

This piece of work was undertaken following Healthwatch Southwark speaking to 397 local people about the issues they thought they should focus on. The most common concern by some distance was the issue of getting timely access to GPs.

An enter and view visit was carried out to every GP practice in Southwark and a practice managers survey, a receptionists survey and semi structured interviews with patients were carried out at each.

Key findings from the project included:

 76% of people said that they find it ‘very easy’ or ‘easy’ to contact their practice, and 23% find it ‘difficult’ or ‘very difficult’.

 Comments indicate that getting through on the telephone can be difficult, especially at certain times of the day.

 Some people find the time at which same-day appointments are released (usually 8am) difficult for a variety of reasons.

The report includes 31 separate recommendations, including:

#1. Practices, with the support of Patient Participation Groups (PPGs), should review their telephone systems to identify if any improvements could be made.

#5. NHS Southwark CCG and GP federations should review the ‘iPlato’ text reminder system and its impact on appointments where patients did not attend (DNAs), in order to determine whether it should be rolled out to all practices.

#11. Practices and GP federations should consider how triage call-back systems could be improved from both a staff and patient perspective. This should look at: The time demand on practice staff & the convenience to patients e.g. if no call-back ‘slot’ is specified.