Following the recent publication of GP appointment data across the country at GP practice level, we want to share this message with our patients.
All of the team at Little Common Surgery and Old Town Surgery are working incredibly hard to provide our patients with the care, treatment and support you need.
In line with all health services, we have seen a significant increase in need since the pandemic. We are now offering more appointments each month than we were two years ago, and we are always looking at new ways to work differently to improve how we offer our services.
It is important to know that there are issues with the data that has been shared today and not all GP practices report in the same way, which means that you cannot make meaningful comparisons between practices.
The data also only shows one part of the work that our team manages on a daily basis, including making referrals, managing diagnostic results, supervision, training and teaching, referrals and prescription activity.
In September, Little Common & Old Town Surgeries provided 11,516 appointments.
- 72% of those were face to face appointments
- 48% of those appointments were provided by GP’s
- 52% of those appointments were provided by other members of our healthcare team
- 80% of those appointments were within two weeks of booking
We purposely book chronic disease reviews and follow-up appointments in advance, and urgent appointments are provided as required.
We are doing all we can to continue to further improve access, from recruiting more clinical and non-clinical staff, further sessions, and looking at ways you can contact us and make requests for appointments, prescriptions and other types of help you may need.
One specific improvement has been the re-introduction of extended access where we are now offering appointments until 8pm on weekdays and between 9am and 5pm on Saturdays. We are working with a local group of GP practices to offer this and the appointments may not be here at the surgery but when you contact us in the normal way we can talk through the options available.
We are working with NHS Sussex to make improvements in the longer term to help improve access to appointments including recruiting a bigger workforce with a variety of clinical roles and using technology to help make contacting us easier.
Importantly, the data today doesn’t show the quality of care provided and we are proud as a team to support our patients every day and provide the help and care you need.
