Station Road Surgery

Drs Whittaker, Purwar, Srinivas,
Venison, Staniforth, Boateng & Teoh

Station Road Surgery, 74 Station Road,
West Wickham, Kent BR4 0PU
Telephone: 020 8777 8245

Practice News and Notices

      

 PATIENT PARTICIPATION GROUP SURVEY – March 2013

 

 

 Q1       How do you normally book an appointment with a doctor?

By telephone

32%

In person

3 %

By internet

65%

 Q2       If you have used the internet to book an appointment how would you rate the service? (12 no answer 8%)

Excellent

23%

Very good

31%

Good

27%

Not very good

11%

Bad

0

 Q3       When you want to see a doctor do you know when the routine appointments are available to book?  

Yes

55%

No

45%

 Q4       Are you aware that we offer appointments outside our normal working hours to accommodate patients who find it difficult to attend during the day?

Yes

83%

No

17%

 Q5       Have you ever been seen in an emergency appointment on the same day?

Yes

62%

No

38%

 Q6       How would you rate this service? (38 no answer 28%)

Excellent

15%

Very good

31%

Good

25%

Not very good

1%

Bad

0

 Q7       Have you been seen at the surgery by one of our Practice Nurses of Health Care Assistant in the last year?

Yes

59%

No

41%

 Q8       How would you rate your treatment by the Practice Nurse/Health Care Assistant? (50 no answer 35%)

Excellent

29%

Very good

25%

Good

10%

Not very good

1%

Bad

0%

 Q9      How would you rate the service you receive from the reception/administration staff?

Excellent

31%

Very good

62%

Good

7%

Not very good

0%

Bad

0%

 Q10     How satisfactory do you find the repeat prescription service at the surgery? (10 no answer 7%)

Very satisfactory

29%

Satisfactory

31%

Unsatisfactory

15%

Do not use

18%

 Patients who completed our survey were invited to give additional comments, which expressed general satisfaction with the surgery and the services provided. From the results of the survey and the comments received we have agreed the following Action Plan, and hope you will support our ideas.

 SUMMARY OF RESULTS AND ACTION PLAN

 Internet Booking of Appointments (Questions 1 - 2)

 The purpose of sending our survey out electronically was to target patients who use the internet to book their appointments. 65% of those who responded booked their appointments through the internet, and only 11% expressed dissatisfaction with this service. This may be due to the fact that when we changed our computer system in November 2012 we experienced problems with internet booking system, which has hopefully now been resolved. If any patient is still experiencing problems please let us know and we will issue new details for you to re-register. Any patient who wishes to register to use the internet booking system should collect a leaflet from the surgery.

 Plan We know that patients find it difficult to get through on the telephones on occasion and we would like to encourage the use of the internet booking system to avoid this happening. We have made a selection of appointments with each doctor available to book on the internet each day. The internet appointments can be booked up to four weeks ahead or at shorter notice and are released at the same time as they appear to book at the surgery. 

 Appointments (Questions 3-6)

 Just over half of the patients who responded said they knew when routine appointments were available. 

 Plan We need to continue to advertise when appointments are available/released for booking so that patients don’t have to keep calling back, which we appreciate can be very frustrating. Information about our appointments is available on our website, www.wwdoc.co.uk and in the surgery. Below is a brief description of our appointments:

 All the doctors have appointments available to book up to 4 weeks ahead – so if you see a doctor and they say they want to see you in 3 or 4 weeks you can book this appointment before you leave the surgery, or you can book ahead if you know a particular day that you would like to be seen due to time off work or similar.

 Routine appointments can also be booked 48 working hours ahead and these are released at 9.30am and 2.00pm daily for two working days ahead, i.e. Monday for Wednesday. Availability of these appointments very much depends on whether the doctor is on holiday or covering for another doctor.

 Appointments are available between 7.00am and 8.30am on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays (excluding Bank Holidays) and alternate Saturday mornings between 8.00am and 11.15am. These appointments are particularly aimed at those patients who find it difficult to attend an appointment with the doctor during normal surgery hours.

 Patients who need to be seen urgently on the day can call the surgery from 8.30am and be given a time to come to the surgery that morning (Monday to Friday only). We ask that this service is used appropriately for patients with medical problems which genuinely cannot wait until the next routine appointment. Due to the fact that it is impossible to predict how long each patient will need with the doctor we ask that patients be prepared for a possible wait.

 Seeing a Nurse or Health Care Assistant (Questions 7 & 8)

 59% of the patients who responded to our survey had seen one of our Practice Nurses or Health Care Assistant in the last year and only 1% had not been happy with the service they had received. 

 Plan

 Inform patients what services are provided by the Practice Nurses and our Health Care Assistant to help them get the best service from the surgery.

 We have three Practice Nurses, Nurse Ruth Adams, Nurse Mary Gross and Nurse Faith Bayley-Dainton. They offer the following services:    asthma, diabetes and COPD annual reviews by invitation and support in these areas at all other times; wound care/dressings – please give us as much notice as you can when booking these appointments and book a couple of weeks ahead where possible; childhood immunisations; travel advice and vaccination; contraception including injection/implant and pill checks and general advice; cervical smears; ear syringing (after oiling).

 Our Health Care Assistant offers the following services: smoking cessation advice and support; NHS Health Checks (patients aged 40-74 who do not have any heart disease or high blood pressure and who are not on statin medication); spirometry and blood pressure checks.

 Other services provided by the surgery (Questions 9 & 10)  

 We asked about the service patients receive from our reception/administration staff. 93% of responses said the service was very good or excellent. This was very encouraging to see as historically reception staff have been portrayed as “dragons” and it is nice to see that patients no longer feel this way. 

 Plan

 Inform patients about the roles of the reception/administration. Our reception staff are here to help patients with making or cancelling appointments, giving out results (please remember to phone between 11am and 4pm for results, in the hope that you will get through more easily), passing on messages and answering queries. They do a vast amount of other work, not seen by patients, and are always happy to help. 

 Our administration team: the Practice Manager, Practice Administrator, Administration Secretary, Administration clerk, Prescription clerk and our two Medical Secretaries, also offer support to the doctors and patients in a variety of ways. Patients may not always see them but they are hard at work in the background.

 The Prescription clerk works every day and processes all repeat prescription requests. It takes 48 working hours from receipt of a request for the prescription to be produced, signed and ready for collection at the surgery. On occasion there may be a query with the prescription, which will require the authorisation of a doctor, and this can cause a delay of up to a day. The delay is to ensure that the correct medication is being prescribed at the correct dose, and that the patient is complying with how the medication should be taken, i.e. not over- or under-using it. Occasionally the patient will be asked to come and see a doctor or nurse before their next prescription is due. If this has not happened by the time the next prescription request is received it may result in not being able to provide a prescription or only a reduced amount. If you don’t have the printed list of medication to use to put in a request please write what you require on a piece of paper with your name, address and date of birth and hand it in at reception, or put it in the prescription box which is now located on the wall outside the front porch.

 It is very important that patients monitor their medication to ensure they don’t run out. 

 If you are requesting a prescription ahead of when it is due please make sure you write the reason on your request, i.e. going on holiday on the 1^st of April for 3 weeks. This will help the Prescription Clerk to prepare your prescription.

 We can only take requests for medication over the telephone for those patients who have been identified as housebound or who the doctor has agreed can do so and this has been recorded in the patient’s medical record. Please do not ask for repeat prescriptions over the telephone unless you are a housebound patient.

  Plan from last year

 As you will know, we moved to a new computer system last year, which caused some problems but these have now settled down. One of the problems encountered was that some of the contact details for patients did not transfer to the new computer system. We will be putting notices out asking patients to let us have their current contact details in case we need to contact them, or for when we write referrals letters so that appointments reach the right person.

 You may have seen the work going on to improve the surgery, or heard it if you have visited the surgery recently! We apologise for any noise or other inconvenience you may have suffered during this time. We hope you like the improvements. 

 The Waiting Room notice boards have been cleared and we will be making better use of these to display relevant and current information.

 We continue to encourage patients to give us written feedback, whether good or bad, and suggestions for improving the service we provide to our patients. Please send your thoughts to Pauline O’Dwyer, Practice Manager.

 Thank you.

  

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PATIENT PARTICIPATION GROUP

We formed a "virtual" Patient Group last year which has proved very successful, and I thank all the current members for their help and suggestions over the past year.  This year we are trying to put together a Newsletter for patients and there will be a surgery questionnaire available shortly in order for you to provide your feedback on our services.  We welcome your thoughts and suggestions at any time, not just when we are conductin our annual questionnaires. 

We are always happy to welcome new members.   If you would like to join our group please hand your details in at the Reception Desk marked for the attention of Pauline O'Dwyer. Practice Manager.  The Group communicates via email so please include your email address.

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 BLOOD TESTS AT ADDINGTON ROAD HEALTH CENTRE FOR PATIENTS FROM STATION ROAD SURGERY

We have been unable to free up space in our building in the mornings for us to be able to take blood for our patients.  We have therefore commissioned a blood taking service (phlebotomy) through Bromley Healthcare, to be provided for our patients in the Addington Road Surgery building.  This is separate to the GP services for patients at Addington Road.

Currently the phlebotomy clinic time for our patients is a Wednesday morning between 9.30 and 10.30am.  It is by appointment only, so patients must phone first to make their appointment - it is not a "walk in" service.

Details of the phone number can be found on the bottom of the blood test form given to our patients, but if you want to make a note of it, it is 020 8857 6028.

Results will still take between 5 to 7 days, and patients should still contact this surgery for their results.

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RESULTS

Please try to help us manage the volume of calls received at peak times by calling for results between 11am and 4pm.  Thank you.

  

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 APPOINTMENTS ON THE DAY

Urgent appointments are available on the same day for any patient who feels their medical condition requires urgent attention.  To request an emergency appointment please telephone the surgery as soon as possible.  The telephone lines are open between 8.30 and 9.30am specifically for requests to be seen that morning.  For a same day evening emergency appointment the best time to call is between 2.30 and 3.00pm.  Please bear in mind that the evening surgery is a "sit and wait" surgery and there may be a very long wait to be seen if there are a lot of patients.  Appointment times can be given for the morning emergency surgery.

Please use this service appropriately and not just for convenience.  For example, repeat prescription requests, completing medical forms (such as medical certificates) are not considered appropriate for an emergency appointment.

 

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 EXTENDED HOURS

We appreciate that some of our patients are unable to attend the surgery during normal working hours.  We have therefore added appointments between 7.00 and 8.00am on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays and 8.00 to 11.15am on Saturdays, which can be booked up to four weeks ahead.  These appointments must be pre-booked as there is no provision for walk-in emergencies.

 

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 BOOKING APPOINTMENTS ON-LINE

As the telephone lines get very busy, particularly  first thing in the morning, we have introduced the option for patients to book appointments with all our doctors through the internet.  Please ask at Reception for a registration form, which will give you a unique access code for your own personal use.  Parents can register for this service to be able to book appointments for any child under the age of 16.  Once a child reaches 16 this facility will be removed and the 16 year old will need to come to the Surgery to register to use the service themselves.  Further information is available in the Surgery.  Please use the following link to go to the Emis Access website www.emisaccess.co.uk.  You will need to register as a new user to be able to create your own password before being able to book appointments.  This facility can also be used to cancel appointments.

 

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 CHOICE OF HOSPITAL

Every patient has the right to choose which hospital they would like to go to in the event that they require a referral for a specialist opinion.  The doctor will discuss the choice of hospitals available and make the appropriate referral. 

 

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 NHS HEALTH CHECKS

We are now offering an NHS Health Check for patients in the age group 40-74 years, who have no history of heart disease, heart failure, stroke, atrial fibrillation, hypertension, diabetes or chronic kidney disease and are not taking any heart medication.  We will be sending out invitations to eligible patients, but if you fall into this criteria and wish to have a Health Check, please contact the surgery and request an appointment for an NHS Health Check with our Health Care Assistant, Vivienne Green.

 

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 EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY

The Practice has an Equal Opportunities/Anti-discrimination Policy, which states that the Practice: