Report: GP services, St Helens

Healthwatch St Helens set up the ‘Good Quality GP Services’ task group in February 2015. They wanted to find out what ‘good quality GP service’ actually means to people in St Helens. The survey was conducted from 2nd April 2015 and responses were paused and collated on 19th May 2015. In total there were 672 responses from St Helens residents from online forms and completing paper questionnaires. Further completed questionnaires from respondents in neighbouring boroughs have been anonymised and forwarded to the

appropriate local Healthwatch. The survey was sent out to all Healthwatch members, made available on the website, and distributed widely throughout voluntary and public sector partners.

Conclusions

Healthwatch St Helens felt that the number of response to the questionnaire (672) was significant in illustrating how important GP service are to the people of St Helens. The same consultation methods were used as with previous questionnaires but the number of responses was significantly higher. Clear patterns have emerged through the comments made which reflect many of the issues that are raised with us regularly.

Recommendations

• GP practices should implement customer service training for all staff. Healthwatch believes this is essential as staff attitudes was a recurring theme throughout the LINk project and remains a current issue today. Although 75% of the respondents told us that all staff at their practice have a friendly and helpful manner, and 71% said that reception staff are friendly, professional and say things privately and discreetly, there were a high number of comments about staff attitudes suggesting that those people who are not happy with practice staff feel strong enough about it to comment.

• Raise awareness about support for patients with additional needs. It was clear that few patients are unaware of whether their practice goes the extra mile to support patients with additional needs. This could include BSL interpreters, language line and information in large print

• Educate patients about the system in place of not being able to order prescriptions over the telephone. Medicines Management Teams had declared this inappropriate for data protection reasons. However, from our survey it is clear that some people would prefer to order prescriptions over the telephone. This suggests that patients would benefit from clear information that this is not an option and the reasons why.

• Keep patients informed about staff training Although some practice managers felt that this was not feasible, others agreed that displaying a sign saying for example, “Last month our staff were trained in equality and diversity’, would not be particularly onerous. It would help patients to feel informed about what practices are doing to improve service and would give some credibility to some practices closing at certain times throughout the week for staff development. Our survey revealed that 34% of people have some awareness around staff training and 41% saying they would like to be.

• Increase dementia awareness In collaboration with the St Helens Carers Centre and Alzheimer’s Society, and through previous LINk and Healthwatch work, it has become clear that only a few practices have helpful information about dementia, such as details of support groups. The Alzheimers society has recently visited all practices with up-to-date publicity, so we would expect to see this displayed.

• More support required for young carers Previous Healthwatch work has identified that young carers struggle to get appointments which do not clash with school, college or caring responsibilities. We are aware that only 2 practices are currently signed up to the ‘Young People Friendly’ award which is based on the Department of Health ‘You’re Welcome’ quality criteria and we would suggest that all practices consider this.