GP website check-up

Healthwatch North Yorkshire carried out reviews of all GP websites in North Yorkshire to explore how easy to use, up to date and accessible they are. A team of eight volunteers undertook 'health checks' of the 84 websites that fall under the 17 Primary Care Networks in North Yorkshire. Reviews took place between 26 July and 1 September 2023.

The volunteers acted as a patient or member of the public and navigated their way around the websites and answered yes or no to a set of questions with an option to add additional comments.

• In terms of general usability, pop ups or overlays were reported on 12% of the websites. It can be difficult for people to navigate past overlays so they can create usability issues.
• In relation to appointments, it was reported as being easy to find out how to make an appointment on 77% of the practice websites.
• Only 20% of the websites had an accessibility icon, 70% had an accessibility page and 10% had no accessibility icon or accessibility page.
• In terms of whether there was current PPG information on websites, 51% were reported as having this information. However, in some cases, even though there was information about how to join the PPG there was either no information about what they do or the information (e.g. minutes or reports from previous meetings) was reported as being very out of date.

Healthwatch North Yorkshire will disseminate the findings to all the GP practices and PCNs involved in this study.