Feedback from The Friends and Family Test and Patient Participation Group

NHS England have introduced the Friends and Family Test (FFT) as a feedback tool to support the principle that people who use NHS services should have an opportunity to provide feedback on their experience.
 It asks people if they would recommend the services they have used and, combined with a follow-up question, the FFT should provide a mechanism to highlight both good and poor patient experience. NHS England states that this kind of feedback is vital in transforming NHS services and supporting patient choice.

Thank you to all of those who have provided feedback. So far we received the following responses to our questions:

"How likely are you to recommend us to friends or family if they needed similar care or treatment?"

"Is there anything you would like to suggest to improve the patient experience at this surgery?"

• 8.30 ringing for an appointment is sometimes difficult
• Inform patients if doctor or nurse is running late
• Improve confidentiality at the desk 

Positive comments from patients

• Excellent advice and care
• Very helpful receptionists
• first class service

Patient Participation group

We also run a patient participation group to ask patients for ideas on how we can improve our services.

Over the last couple of years the main focus for patients has been

• the inadequate telephone system
• 8:30 opening of our telephone line and premises for working patients and parents undertaking the school run
• An electronic check in screen to avoid the queue at the desk
• An extra receptionist first thing in the morning to help with the queue and the phone line.

The improvements we have made are...

• On recommendation from last year’s group and suggestions from a questionnaire in practice ,we changed our telephone system with the following features call queuing, call recording, message to welcome you to the practice and give you information about our opening times.
• From 16^th December we have been opening our telephone line and premises from 8am, you can also book online for on the day available GP appointments from 8am.
• We purchased an electronic check in system to avoid queuing at the desk.
• After an audit involving telephone calls and queues first thing in a morning to get an appointment it revealed that we needed an extra receptionist only on the busiest day of the week which is a Monday and this has been put in place.