Enter and view: Brookside Surgery

Healthwatch Warwickshire did an announced Enter and View visit to Brookside Surgery on 10th June 2015. No concerns were observed with the external building, which is purpose built and has its own car park. The inside of the surgery was clean and decorated to a good standard.

The Healthwatch team found the surgery met most their observational criteria, except in a few areas. The surgery lacked privacy at reception for patients, but patients can be taken to a private room if they need to talk in confidence. There was no call system so GPs would come out to call their patients, and information for patients was not available in other formats such as easy read etc., while a translator can be provided upon request.

The questionnaire asked the patients attending the surgery about appointments, access, parking, signage, staff attitudes, cleanliness and the quality of care amongst other things. 5 out of the 31 found the appointment booking system to be average with it being “more difficult to get an appointment now than before.” About half of the respondents found the accessibility to the surgery e.g. parking, public transport etc to be average. All respondents rated the staff (GP, nurses and reception) as good. However only 18 found the punctuality of the appointments to be good, with some saying “I have often been sat for a long time.” Overall the response from the patients was positive with a few concerns about appointments, “The surgery needs to make it easier to get an appointment. If you want to see a particular GP it can take up to a fortnight.”

The report recommends informing patients on the day of any delays which may impact their appointment. It also recommends the surgery look into the concerns raised by the patients in respect of the appointment booking system. One solution to this could be maximising the use of online appointment booking to reduce the amount of telephone traffic.

The Practice Manager responded saying “We realise that keeping patients informed if a doctor or nurse is running late is appreciated. Reception staff do inform patients when booking in if there is likely to be a delay and we will now ensure that all patients are notified of any delay when circumstances allow. We have now extended the number of appointments available to book online as recommended and would encourage our patients to register for our online booking and repeat prescription service.”