Every year, the NHS distributes the National GP Patient Survey, usually in January, to around 2.5 million randomly selected people registered with a GP practice, to feed back on their experiences of their GP Practice. This is sent in the post. If you receive an invitation, please do take the time to take part and have your say. Elmwood Family Doctors comprehensively review the results once available (usually in August) to understand what’s working and what needs to improve, so we can deliver the best possible service to patients.
We are exceptionally proud of our most recent results for 2023, which were our best ever.
In particular, we were very proud that 99% of respondents found our reception team helpful, and that 97% described their overall experience with us as good, which means Elmwood Family Doctors now ranks in the top 1% of practices nationwide! All our results were above the national and local averages, something we are very proud of. As a team, all our staff work exceptionally hard and we try to deliver the best possible service we can.
The survey also showed that 46% of respondents usually get to see or speak to their preferred GP when they would like to. Whilst this result is better than the national and local averages, we appreciate that continuity of care is very important to patients. This can be difficult to achieve; we have a large clinical team with a mix of part time and full time working patterns, which means it may take longer to secure an appointment with them than another available clinician. We also offer an excellent on-the-day urgent service and, for this to work, patients are offered the next available appointment, which could be with any clinician. However, improving continuity is something we as a practice are working hard to achieve.
