Practice Patient Participation Report 2014-15

This is the fourth year Harcourt Medical Centre has worked with a patient participation group to respond
to patient feedback and improve the service to patients. Three priority areas were considered this year:

1. Access to pre-bookable appointments

GP appointments have previously been released in a two week cycle (e.g. patients can book 1/3 of the available appointments up to 2 weeks in advance)

We have changed this by releasing the pre-bookable appointments on a three week cycle.

We hope this will give additional flexibility to patients and their carers when making routine pre-bookable appointments

2. Telephone access to the practice

We currently have 5 incoming lines available for patients, we have all the lines manned at 0800-0900 for the peak time.

Unfortunately we cannot prevent the lines being engaged at peak time. In addition to this our call system doesn't 'stack calls' like a call centre - this is very expensive and a business needs multiple telephone lines to facilitate this which is not financially viable for a small GP Practice.

We contacted our phone supplier (4Comm) to see if there were any ways to improve our current system on these occasions – sadly there are no easy options.

The telephone contract is due for renewal this coming financial year, we hope to look for a new supplier with some solutions to this problem.

3. Access to the practice premises and improvements to practice facilities

The practice contracted ASFD (www.adsf.co.uk), an automatic door specialist company, to install a pair of automated doors to improve access for disabled patients and parents with pushchairs etc.

Work has now been completed allowing improved access to patients and their carer's.

Please download the full report here

Join the practice patient participation group

If you are a registered patient and would like to join the practice patient participation group, please ask a member of the practice team for an application form. Alternatively register online via this secure link: http://www.harcourtmedical.co.uk/secureregistration/prg/ and we'll be in touch.