Survey results show patients happy with GP services

Results of the latest national GP survey published at the start of July show that patients in East Lancashire and Blackburn with Darwen are on average happy with their overall experience of their GP practice.

The GP Patient Survey which is carried out independently by Ipsos MORI for NHS England every year is designed to give patients the opportunity to feed back about their experiences of their surgery.

It includes questions about a range of issues including how easy or difficult it is to make an appointment, satisfaction with opening hours and the quality of care received from GPs and practice nurses.

Dr Phil Huxley, a GP in Earby and Chair at NHS East Lancashire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), said:

"Primary care is the cornerstone of the NHS. Approximately 90 per cent of patient contact with the NHS contact is with local GPs who provide a vital, frontline service.

These are really positive and encouraging results and I would like to thank all of our GP colleagues across the two CCG areas for their hard work particularly given the increasing demand on their practices and the pressure they experience as GPs.

We are committed to improving our GP services even further and finding out what isn’t working as well and how we can make things better for patients."

The results indicate that overall satisfaction is better than the national average when compared with other areas.  In Blackburn with Darwen 71 per cent of patients found it easy to get through to someone at their GP surgery on the phone compared to 68 per cent nationally.  In East Lancashire 78 per cent of patients were satisfied with their GP surgery’s opening hours compared to 76 per cent nationally.

Darwen GP and Clinical Chief Officer at NHS Blackburn with Darwen CCG, Dr Chris Clayton, said:

"The CCGs both work very closely with their respective member GP practices and do support them to work more collaboratively with other GP colleagues.  Not only do we support the practices by helping improve their workforce, we have expanded our training programme for all members of GP staff and reduced the level of bureaucracy by improving our reporting system which does help to increase the time available to patients.

In addition, through our local agreements the CCG is continuing to invest an additional £2m locally in order to improve quality and access to GP services."

The full results for each of the CCGs can be accessed on the GP Patient Survey website.