Share your experience of booking a GP appointment in the early morning, weekend or evening

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The survey can be completed online

Healthwatch Rochdale is asking local people to share their experience of booking a GP appointment in the early morning, weekend or evening to identify any changes necessary to better suit the needs of Rochdale residents.

GP practices across the borough are now offering appointments on weekday evenings (6.30pm - 8.00pm) and on the weekend (9.00am - 5.00pm Saturday). Some GP practices are also offering early morning appointments (7.00am - 8.00am). This is known as the Enhanced Access Service.

GP Practices are currently working in partnerships to deliver services to people and these partnerships are called Primary Care Networks (PCNs). There are six PCNs in the Rochdale borough which are Heywood, Middleton, Pennines, Rochdale North, Canalside and The Bridge.

Healthwatch Rochdale is the local independent health and social care champion for the Rochdale borough whose main purpose is to listen to local people’s experiences of using health and social care services and use those experiences to help improve services locally & nationally.

Kate Jones, chief executive officer at Healthwatch Rochdale, said: “Most patients in the borough will have received a text message directly from their GP practice asking them to complete a survey on this service. This will be different dependent on which Primary Care Network your practice is in. We are asking for your views as the independent voice for local people to give an overall view of residents from across the Rochdale borough and how this may differ from the findings of individual PCN areas”.

The anonymised findings from this survey will be shared with Heywood, Middleton & Rochdale NHS Integrated Care Partnership. They will combine this with other sources of information to identify changes needed to better suit the needs of Rochdale Borough residents.

You can take the survey by clicking here.