Park Leys Medical Practice

On 14th May 2007 the practice introduced a new appointment system whereby all requests for appointments are assessed (or “triaged”) by the duty doctor.

The change was needed in order to cope with the increasing numbers of appointments being requested. Shortages of available appointments were resulting in undesirable delays for patients and in increasing numbers of “extras” at the end of doctors surgeries.

It was our belief that a significant number of appointment requests could effecti9vely be dealt with by telephone, thereby reducing the need for patients to visit the surgery, speeding up access to doctors and keeping appointments free for those who really need them.

From the start of the new system until 30 November 19412 appointment requests from 8150 patients have been handled in this way, with 6617 telephone consultations (34%) resulting in appointments being made, the remaining queries being dealt with, by the doctor, on the phone. Of the 6617 appointments made by the duty doctor, 60.25 % were the same day, 12.6% the following day and 5.6% the day after that. The remainder were delayed at the patients request, either for convenience or because an appointment with a specific doctor was requested.

Clearly this has been a big change for all involved, patients, doctors and practice staff alike and we have recognised right from the start that the system would need changing in the light of experience and patient feed back. Several changes have been made since the system was introduced, increasing the number of duty doctors on a Monday morning and moving the regular doctors meeting from first thing on Friday are perhaps the two most notable.

We are keen that the system should respond to patient needs and to this end we felt it would be useful to survey a selection of patients, asking them how they felt about the new system.

At the end of November the practice posted questionnaires to 500 patients who had telephoned the surgery during week commencing Monday 5 November. We would like to thank the 169 patients who took the time to reply.

The purpose of the questionnaire was to establish how you, our patients, felt the new appointment system was working. We were keen to see if you were happy that it was an improvement and to identify further developments or changes we can make to enable us to provide you with a better service.

In addition to asking 10 questions with tick box answers we provided patients with the opportunity to add comments and 87 of you took advantage of this, either to reinforce or elaborate on the answers to questions or to draw our attention to other issues not related to the appointment system.

The questions asked, and the percentage patients answering in each category are given in the Table of Results.