Enter and View Six-Month Update: Goodman's Field Medical Practice

Four-Month Follow-up

Healthwatch Tower Hamlets asked a number of follow-up questions to understand whether the recommendations have improved the quality of the service provided at Goodman's Field Medical Practice after 4-months. Updated responses from the practice manager are in bold. 

The report concluded with the following recommendations of improvement:

1)    Regular maintenance for the automatic doors at the entrance, at the time of the visit the sensors appeared to be malfunctioning.

Practice Response: The location of the sensor is the cause of delayed opening. This has already been raised with the ICB and NHS Property services. This is on our agenda to discuss with NHS Property service for an update. There is an ongoing conversation since the mobilisation of the practice. Staff are regularly checking the issue when opening and closing the practice.

The location of the sensor is the cause of delayed opening. There are no further action to this.

2)    Consider redesigning the floor maps to clearly indicate the location of the public washrooms and baby change rooms for easy access and navigation. 

Practice Response: We will discuss the recommendation in our post move meeting for professional signage and in the meantime, we will explore the option of temporary signage

We have put up a signage up to make it clear for patients.

3)    We advised the practice to be more proactive with the maintenance of the air conditioning units at the practice. 

Practice Response: This is an ongoing maintenance issue. The landlord, ICB, NHS Property Service and the Senior Management team along with our Estates team from Operose Health, are all working together to resolve this. This is also on the agenda for our post move meeting. Temporary measures are in place until a permanent solution to the maintenance issue has been identified.

This has been raised with ICB and NHS property services, this is under review.
 

4)    Implementing further training to ensure increased efficiency in call-handling, so that the patients are required to wait for a shorter duration.

Practice Response: During our recent management meeting, we identified that post COVID-19, a significant number of our patients are still contacting the practice for repeat medication during core hours. We are working with our local pharmacy to implement ordering prescriptions on behalf of patients as they did pre-covid. We will also be starting a process of building better patient awareness of requesting medication online. 

We plan to hold engagement events and have appointed digital champions who are on hand to walk patients through the process during practice opening hours. This will significantly reduce the waiting times and the traffic via our telephone during our core hours. We have an ongoing process in place where senior staff members work with our receptionists to ensure better time management on phone calls. 

We have also implemented a call back function, which allows patients to request a call back rather than waiting on the line and their place in the telephone queue is unchanged. 

With the above process changes, we are hopeful that we will be able to manage calls more efficiently.

We are regularly auditing calls waiting time. Reception and administrative staff have a live wall board available to monitor queues. We have identified that mornings are our peak time and we have assigned more staff to attend to calls. 

5)    Consider creating a feedback form in other languages, such as Bengali and Somali, in order to gain feedback from patients with a language barrier.

Practice Response: We have taken this recommendation onboard and we have sent our FFT questionnaire, forms and complaints form to our interpreting team to be translated and we will be implementing this.

We have the feedback forms translated in Bengali and this is available to patients. 

Follow-up Questions:

Could you provide a progress update on the implementation of each recommendation? For example, regarding recommendation #1, what was the outcome of the discussions with the NHS Property Service?

Included in the responses above.

Were there any issues that prevented Goodman’s Field Medical Practice from making any of the improvements?

Not answered.

Has there been a difference in patient feedback since the implementation of the recommendations? Are there any recurring comments that Healthwatch Tower Hamlets should be aware of?

We have not had any feedback from the patients with regards to the changes. We have had a few positive google reviews.

How was your experience of the Enter and View programme? How could it be more helpful? 

We found the Enter and View very helpful as it allowed us make changes and improve our services.