The feedback our surgeries receive from patients, visitors, staff and members of the public is carefully looked at to help us understand what we do well and where we can make improvements.
At DHU we are always keen to improve the care that we provide. Below are some recent examples of feedback we have received and how it has been used to make changes.
Difficulty getting access via phone:
- We have installed a new phone system and invested in Anima, a new triage tool, to mitigate the 8 am rush. You can now contact us via the Anima platform for medical and non-medical requests, and our triage team will respond to you the same day with the appropriate response.
We had long waiting times to answer the phone:
- We have looked at our telephone data and are currently working on ways to alter our workloads to respond more quickly to calls at our busiest times. But you can send us medical and non-medical requests via Anima, our new triage platform.
- We are offering online consultations (admin and/or clinical queries) so you can raise any queries with us, and we will respond the same day to inform you how we can best manage your request and when.
- We have updated our website to let you know how best to contact us and how to access other services when we are closed.
- We are now promoting PHARMACY FIRST, where you can obtain help and advice for any of the following symptoms, so that you do not need to access primary care appointments, which will free up time for us to see more complex patients sooner.
- We now encourage all patients on a repeat prescription to order their next repeat prescription online. This saves you having to contact us by telephone or in person, which helps other patients to access our services more quickly. Please see our website for how to order your repeat prescription online.
Long wait times for appointments:
- We have increased the number and range of clinicians that now provide services to our patients, and you can now access appointments with:
- Pharmacists – in-house and via Pharmacy First
- Pharmacy technicians
- Physicians Associates
- Paramedics
- Social Prescriber Link Workers
- Mental Health Practitioners
- First Contact Physiotherapists
- Please use Anima to submit a medical or non-medical query to let our triage team know what your needs are so they will be able to coordinate your care and help direct you to the service that is most appropriate for you. Our Triage clinicians are part of our team and are working to ensure your needs are being met by the most appropriate service.
- You can use Anima for appointment requests without having to call us. We have now changed how you access our services by offering a “total triage” system. This new approach was recommended by NHS England to improve your access to our services. We made the changes for the following reasons: due to increased demands for appointments, to improve your access to health services as we can now help direct you to the right person or place to receive your care, to improve our care for those with complex health needs by ensuring we can prioritise them and allow them enough time to best manage their needs, to maximise the best use of the growing workforce that is now available to offer services to you. To access our services, please visit our website and click on “Contact us online”. If you are unable to use technology, our staff will be able to complete this form online for you. This new system will help to navigate your request to the correct person to provide the service to you, our Clinical Triage Team will review your queries, and they will determine who is best to speak or see you and in what timeframe.
- We have worked with our local GP colleagues in our Primary Care Network to offer extended access clinical appointments to patients, these appointments are available via telephone consultations or face to face and are located here/in nearby sites. All the practices within our Primary Care Network are working together to help improve access for our patients. These appointments are available each evening/ on some evenings/ and on Saturdays.
- We have shared information on our websites and noticeboards for the new PHARMACY FIRST service, where these are provided by local pharmacies who are working to help support patients to access services locally or via telephone calls for a range of conditions, noted below, our team can help refer you to this new service now.
Not sure where to go for help and advice:
- If people are generally in good health, there is no reason why they can’t look after minor ailments themselves. In most cases, the illness will get better by itself and so an appointment at the practice isn’t usually required. For example, in normally healthy patients, the following symptoms can be managed with self-care in the first instance:
- Patients can find out more information about self-care and get advice about treating minor ailments by visiting www.leicestercityccg.nhs.uk/treating-minor-ailments. We have put this information onto our website to help you to look after minor illnesses yourself. Some Pharmacies also offer a Minor Illness service, which we can direct you to.
- In collaboration with our partners, we delivered health inequalities workshops to support patients with long-term conditions managed their health. We have actively referred patients to the digital weight management program. We have put a link on our website for how you can access the NHS App. This APP helps to provide useful information to you. The NHS App can also help you to order your repeat prescriptions, nominate a pharmacy to collect your prescription from without having to pick it up from the practice, book a range of appointments, cancel your appointments (and if enabled you can ask to view your medical records too.) We have displayed information on our website/ on our noticeboards about how you can access online consultations and send out messages from time to time to our patients to encourage all to sign up to these new services. With the ICB support, we partnership with Health+ and ran four digital enablement workshops to support patients to use the NHS App.
Difficulty using the practice website:
- We have been working with our website provider to make our website easier to navigate and have audited our website using the NHSE website audit tool and implemented changes to improve patients’ interaction and navigation. Please use the link below to take a look at it now to see what has changed.
- We will continue to work with our Patient Participation group (PPG) to refresh the information we share with you on our website so your representatives can help to improve our website. Please use the PPG link below to join our PPG.
- We now share the results of our Friends and Family Test surveys on our website, by the use of “You said / We Did” updates, to keep you informed of our improvements.
By listening to the results of patient survey feedback we aim to:
- Continue to review and improve access to services.
- Continue to review and modernise the telephone system/ make changes to our website information / increase the range and type of services that you can now access locally / help you to be more informed on where you can access health information.
We have now put a link onto our website for you to complete a “Friends and Family Survey” so you can feedback to us on whether you think the changes we have introduced are helping you to access services more easily.
