'It Starts With You' - local GPs asked to keep things simple when seeking patient feedback

Healthwatch Rochdale

As part of the 'It Starts With You' campaign, Healthwatch Rochdale is calling on GP practices, as the front line of the health service, to send a strong cultural signal to patients that the NHS is open and interested in listening to their views.

Healthwatch Rochdale is also encouraging GPs and other primary care staff to share their own stories - with them and with each other – to tell how patient feedback has helped them to learn and improve the way they provide care.

Healthwatch Rochdale is working closely with local GP services by carrying out 12 'Enter and View' visits from April 2017. The aim of these visits is to hear the patient's experience of GP services and give them a voice in helping to make recommendations for change and improvement.

Enter and View visits take place based on what patients say about a service (Healthwatch listens to both good and bad) and can be used to make recommendations for change to improve a service, but equally when services are doing well it enables Healthwatch to share good practice with other services so that they can learn from each other.

Kate Jones, Chief Executive Officer of Healthwatch Rochdale, said: “We asked local people which areas of health and social care they wanted us to work with in 2017/18 and GP services was one of the top four.

"We work closely with GP surgeries in the Rochdale borough allowing patients to share feedback and we have found that GPs are interested in knowing their patients views and opinions and are keen to improve the patient experience.

"As the voice of Rochdale patients we encourage improvements to the process of how GPs seek feedback from their patients.”

New research by health and care champion Healthwatch England adds to a growing evidence base that people recognise the pressures the NHS is under and want to help make it better by sharing their feedback.

The key to turning the public’s willingness to provide feedback into useful insight is to keep it simple.

According to polling carried out by YouGov for Healthwatch, 76% of adults in England would be interested in sharing their feedback with GPs to improve services but only 23% said that they had actually provided feedback. The most common reason given was that patients are unsure how to provide comments and raise concerns (37%).

Of those who had provided feedback to their family doctor, the most popular option was the traditional comments box (44%), followed by face-to-face feedback to GP practice reception staff (18%) and to GP themselves (16%).

When those who had never provided feedback were asked which methods would encourage them to do so in future, 30% said they were mostly likely to respond to text or email follow-ups after a consultation, with 28% again opting for a comments box.

Interestingly social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook were the least popular forum, with just 3% of those who had provided feedback choosing to do so via social media, and only 12% of those interested in giving feedback in future saying they would consider using such channels. This would suggest that using confidential channels is another key element of sharing feedback with GPs.