NHS Immunisation and screening for patients

Healthwatch Lincolnshire wanted to look at the experiences of Lincolnshire people when receiving NHS immunisations and screenings. The work involved included gathering information from 785 people across Lincolnshire during the period September to December 2016.

Key findings

• 1 in 4 families who choose not to immunise their child(ren) are doing this because of concerns about safety.
• 42% of responding individuals had not been invited to attend pneumococcal immunisation.
• In Lincolnshire there are potentially 14,000 women choosing not to attend cervical screening.  Where a woman misses her cervical screening appointment, the research fount that they were 3 times more likely not to reschedule the appointment.
• 23% of adults hadn’t been offered bowel screening.
• 13.7% of women haven’t been offered breast screening.
• A staggering 59% of male respondents hadn’t been offered AAA screening.
• 43% of respondents (potentially 146,000 eligible adults) told us they are not being offered NHS Health Checks.

With more emphasis on ‘self-care’ which in its simplest terms means what steps patients (the public) are taking to help look after themselves, whether this is maintaining a healthy weight, eating better or attending important health appointments. Being offered timely appointments for screening and immunisation is vital if we are to become more involved in our own health.

This report highlights many of the concerns and barriers people face when accessing NHS immunisations and screenings. Some of these barriers are self-generated such as fear or simply forgetting to attend appointments whilst others are organisational barriers such as administration errors or inflexible clinics.

The report contains 10 recommendations.