The Surgery values the feedback and experiences of its patient’s in the highest of regards. From listening to and understanding our patient’s perspectives, the Surgery hopes to grow and develop its services in an attempt to surpass the expectations of our service users.
For openness and transparency, the Surgery is using this page to publish the comments and thoughts of its patients with the actions the Surgery has taken as a result. Should you have any feedback you would like to give, please contact us on 01214761135, info.westheathsurgery_sbpct@nhs.net or speak to a member of our medical administrative team on your next visit to the Surgery.
”It’s hard to get an appointment”
The Surgery’s management team are always looking at ways to increase our capacity whilst still working within restrictive financial constraints implemented nationally. Whilst adding extra appointments in the form of 2 Paramedics, the management team also noted that the Surgery experienced 5856 GP appointments that were not attended by patients in 2023. This large amount of wasted resources puts additional and unnecessary pressure on our appointment availability and increases wait times for appointments which may have a negative effect on those patients who urgently need a clinical review.
In an effort to try to maximise our appointments and improve efficiently, the Surgery has implemented a ‘Did not attend’ process. Whilst the Surgery understands that unforeseen circumstances, external commitments and busy schedules may result in pre-booked appointments falling down a patient’s list of priorities, a continued lack of effort to attend or cancel appointments in a timely manner may result in the Surgery asking you to seek an alternative Healthcare provider. Patients will receive reminders for appointments through an automated text messaging system up to 48 hours before their appointment so please ensure that we have your up-to-date contact details for these messages to be received.
”I was late to be seen for my appointment”
Through 2020-2023 (and to a lesser extent, to present), the Surgery received feedback that whilst patients were pleased with the clinical service provided, the punctuality of the appointment start time could be improved.
Due to the role the Surgery has in the local community, our team often encounter urgent, unforeseen situations which need our clinical input. Whilst we are not an urgent treatment centre or do not specialize in acute, severe medical presentations, our clinical team have a duty of care to support our patients in the safe and appropriate manner which can sometimes cause a delay to an appointment start time.
These urgent presentations are out of the Surgery’s control however, another cause for delayed appointments was found to be the punctuality of our patients, with a high number of patients regularly attending late for their appointment. To counteract this and to reduce avoidable pressures on the services we offer, the Surgery have initiated a 5 minute ‘grace period’. If a patient is more than 5 minutes late for an appointment, the patient will be asked to rebook and a ‘DNA’ will be saved within their records. Multiple DNA’s will follow the process described above.
As our standard appointment slot is 10 minutes, having a longer grace period would be detrimental to other patients whilst also not providing the patient in question with sufficient time to discuss their medical query. We hope that our patients understand the reasoning behind our actions behind the feedback provided.
”Why don’t you have any appointments, its an emergency?” and ”111 have told me that my GP needs to see me urgently”
In order to effectively treat our patient’s clinical needs, The Surgery has 2 general types of appointments: Routine and Acute.
Routine appointments are available to be booked into in advance and are used for clinical queries of a non-urgent nature such as chronic disease management, medication reviews or Med3 forms. Acute appointments are released on the day and are used to book patients an appointment for an urgent clinical assessment or clinical presentations that may require urgent intervention. Please note that to increase the Surgery’s capacity and to ensure that our patients are treated by a suitable clinician, our Paramedic team do see a large proportion of our acute appointments. This is to utilize the team’s expertise in urgent, high pressured situations and to also increase our GP routine capacity.
Our ratio of Urgent appointments to routine appointments is always under review depending on the need of our patients. Once our Urgent capacity has been utilized, our call handlers will give suitable advice on alternative options for you to utilize should you require medical attention for that day such as 111, local Urgent Treatment Centre’s or a routine call back at the Surgery on a later date.
111 may often advise callers to contact their GP for an appointment, despite being signposted to themselves from the Surgery. We do apologize that in cases such as this when our capacity is reached, we are unable to accommodate any further requests for appointments and further signposting may be given. We operate with pre-booked appointments only. Despite the size of our facility, we cannot accommodate walk-in requests- if appointments are available to be booked into, our administrative team will work to get you seen as soon as possible.
”I need an urgent issue of my medication” or ”my consultant told me you would issue this medication for me”
The Surgery’s standard timeframe for completing medication requests is 48 working hours. To ensure fairness and the safety of all of our patients and to protect the resilience of our service, the Surgery cannot offer an urgent medication request service. The team will endeavor to turn around medication requests in the quickest time possible however, we encourage patients to order there medication in a responsible timeframe.
Often patients will be issued medication following a hospital visit or interaction with specialist clinics. The Surgery cannot begin to issue requested medication until we receive relevant paperwork from the referring body. Upon receipt of this documentation, the Surgery clinical team will review the request to ensure that it is suitable to action within a GP setting. We understand the apprehension that waiting on medication can cause however, we must follow this line of communication to make sure our patients are safe and appropriate Medicines Management monitoring is maintained.
‘I was not satisfied with the service I received”
Despite the Surgery team consistently trying their best to deliver safe and effective levels of care to all patients, we understand that the standards we hold ourselves to may not align with the expectations of our patients.
If any concerns need to be raised with the Surgery, please contact us on 0121 476 1135 or email us on info.westheathsurgery_sbpct@nhs.net, where you will be asked for a brief overview of your concerns. Once these concerns have been disclosed to the Surgery, a member of the management team will be in contact to discuss your concerns further after an initial investigation process. Please note that due to capacity and demand, this may not always be from the Practice Manager but could be from the Assistant Practice Manager or Reception supervisor.