Mystery shopping: primary care GP practice
Summary
We undertake regular review visits to health and social care services to talk to patients, service-users, their relatives and carers to gather their feedback about the quality of care and services they receive. Ten surgeries were visited between July and December 2017. We either called or visited the GP practices to find out about their registration processes, using a series of prepared questions.
You feel more comfortable in a place or with people that you know.
Key findings
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Mixed messages with regards to ID and proof of address. In most cases these documents were required to complete a registration, with some surgeries seeming unclear on what they required.
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Overall awareness of the translation services appeared to be good, however patients were found to be less aware of the service if it did not affect them personally.
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59% of patients were also aware of the possibility of seeing a female GP if needed, 12% were not aware of the option while 20% said the service was not relevant for them.
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63% of patients said they had not used the online services.
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69% of patients felt their GP clearly explained their condition and implications. 67% also reported that their GP explains the medication and how it should be used.
Recommendations
- Ensure patients are better informed on services and options available to them, including BSL and female GPs and extended appointments for those with learning disabilities.
- Improve promotion of the online services as an easy alternative to making an appointment by phone and enable staff to assist patients/carers with lower IT knowledge to set up the system on their Smart phones.
- Improve staff awareness of translation services available, how to access them and promote them among patients.
- The CCG to circulate guidance to GPs about registration, particularly for those without easy access to ID and/or proof of address, confirming that this is not a necessity and should not be a barrier in any way for local residents wanting to register.
- GPs to explain medication requirements, such as times of day and regularity of taking medication.
I wouldn’t use online services. Not very easy.
