In June 2018, we went to Wendover Health Centre and Bedgrove Surgery to carry out a GP Enter and View visit. Enter and View visits are part of the local Healthwatch programme and involve visiting health and social care services to find out how they are being run and make recommendations where there are areas for improvement.
GP Enter and View
What we did
We visited both the surgeries run by Westongrove Partnership – covering morning and afternoon sessions. We talked to 21 people and asked them a number of questions about making appointments, visiting the surgery and after their visit. We also spoke to staff and spent time observing the waiting room areas.
Why?
One of our three priority areas is primary care. We wanted to do a GP Enter and View visit in the Aylesbury Vale area at a surgery that had an average star rating from the feedback given to us. We wanted to talk to patients to find out more about their views on the surgery from a patient perspective.
What did we discover?
Overall, there was a general feeling that patients were happy about their experiences.
We have made recommendations to the partnership based on our findings. Our main findings were:
- Half of patients found it easy to book an appointment, although some found booking online difficult
- Many patients did not know about the Patient Participation Group (PPG) or how to give feedback
- More obvious information on performance/patient satisfaction, hearing loops, alternative formats, translation/signing services or advice in other languages needed to be displayed in waiting room areas.
Westongrove Partnership’s response was;
‘Thank you very much to the team at Healthwatch Bucks for conducting an ‘Enter & View’ visit…. The team were professional and friendly, and were very helpful in assisting with the promotion of our Patient Participation Group, resulting in a number of new recruits. We are pleased to see so many positive comments from patients and take on board the suggestions made regarding improvements. The report has been shared with our team at Westongrove, and we will be working through the recommendations made in the report.’
