Patients urged to rate GPs
pharmafile | June 8, 2012 | News story | Medical Communications, Sales and Marketing | DH, England, GPs, Lord Howe, NHS
The government is cranking up its information strategy with the publication of new data on 8,000 GP surgeries in England.
Last month the coalition pledged that by 2015 patients will be able to email GP surgeries, book their GP appointments online, order repeat prescriptions, access test results and see their medical records.
Now the Department of Health is revealing information on the NHS Choices website which it says will help patients select the right GP and help the NHS improve how it operates.
Crucially, they will be able to compare the performance of their own GP with others as respondents to the GP Patient Survey start giving practices a mark out of ten.
This will contribute to a new measure of patient experience covering things such as how easy it is to make an appointment and how patients feel about their experience.
Other subjective measures, including whether the doctors and nurses are good at explaining things and listening to patients, will also be taken into account.
The Patients Association welcomed the move, saying that its helpline is logging increasing complaints about GPs, including difficulties in seeing doctors and the poor behaviour of reception staff.
“[The proposals] will result in more information being available for patients when they are making a choice about which GP to register with,” said the association’s chief executive Katherine Murphy.
“These changes will not resolve these issues overnight, but providing clear and easily comparable data is certainly a step forward,” she concluded.
Patients will also be able to search for GP surgeries with experience of treating people with various conditions, such as diabetes, coronary heart disease and epilepsy.
“Opening up this data is another step forward in giving people more choice,” said health minister Lord Howe. “Patients will now be able to see exactly what the experience of being a patient at each GP surgery is really like.
“We want to make it easier for patients to find the best NHS care for them. Giving patients more information about their local NHS is a big part of our commitment to transparency and using data to drive improvements,” he added.
As part of these changes, new data and an analytical tool will also be published on the NHS Information Centre: this will include how many patients from each GP surgery didn’t attend their first outpatient appointment at hospital.
It will also detail the delivery of pneumonia vaccinations for at risk patients, such as those over 65 or who have long-term chronic conditions.
Adam Hill
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