Craven communities together: timely access to health services
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Healthwatch North Yorkshire was asked by Craven Communities Together Health and Care Partnership to find out about people’s experiences of accessing health and well-being services to help them understand what actions are needed to try to improve health outcomes in the Craven area. There is evidence to suggest that people living in deeply rural areas experience delays in accessing health and care services, resulting in poorer health outcomes. They designed and promoted the survey collaboratively, with over 550 responses, roughly 50% of which were from people living with chronic health conditions.
The survey provided rich detail about the personal experiences and perceptions of health and care services including waiting times across a range of services and experience of accessing mental health, dentistry, GPs, hospitals and pharmacies.
Healthwatch asked people what stopped them from using health or wellbeing services, or makes it more difficult and found the top three issues were:
1. Time taken for appointments/ inconvenience of appointment times.
2. Transport issues.
3. Wanting a face to face appointment or to see the same person.
Transport in Craven is what is described as a ‘wicked’ issue; it’s fragmented, delivered by providers across different sectors, and funding is problematic. It isn’t always accessible. To explore it further,
The workshop participants helped Healthwatch to understand the transport enablers and barriers, and to start to envision ways to address the barriers, including ways to bring health services to people, thus reducing the need for transport. Some partner task and finish groups are going to look at this in more detail, together with the possibility of an improved community transport offer.