GP access report

Healthwatch Telford and the Wrekin wanted to understand local people's experience of accessing GP surgeries as their experience seemed to be at odds with the national surveys on GP access.  They undertook a survey and looked at their own feedback, hearing from around 9,600 in total.

For many people, their views are informed by what they consider to be poor experiences. Equally the responses show that it is not exclusively poor even for those surgeries where more people rated the experience of making their last appointment as poor, there were still some saying that it was good.

Many people express frustration when it comes to their experiences of trying to access primary care, be that in its simplest form of trying to visit their surgery and speak to the reception team, but being denied this and told to phone instead, through to people trying to use online services and commenting why bother as there are never any appointments there, or the effort to actually get through to surgery by phone after repeated attempts only to then face a lengthy wait of up to an hour or more in a queue and be told there are no more appointments available and to phone back tomorrow.

Not everyone is aware of the range of appointment options or how Primary Care Networks are designed to operate. There are multiple examples of people considering the staff members receiving and answering phone calls at surgeries to have little empathy or compassion and often describe them as rude and abrupt.

Reassuringly once people have actually got to the appointment their experience becomes more positive in the support, care and treatment they receive from primary care team members of different roles. Although for some this is not always the case. People have readily commented on changes already made in their surgeries or lack of them and suggested how things can improve along with sharing their final thoughts on their experience in the last question.