Patients will be asked more detailed questions about their GP and the service they receive as part of The GP Patient Survey for 2009.
Details of the imminent survey have been published in new guidance sent from the Department of Health to GP practices, PCTs and strategic health authorities.
Around 5.5million registered patients in England will be invited to take part in the survey which will run from January to March of next year (2009) and will be mailed a questionnaire.
As well as informing all interested parties about the quality of primary care services being given to patients, the results will also be used to help calculate payments to GP practices under the QOF.
The new survey, to be carried out by independent survey specialist Ipsos MORI, features an expanded questionnaire with a wider range of issues.
Ipsos MORI partnered itself with primary care academics from the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre (NPCRD) the University of Manchester and the Peninsular Medical School at the University of Exeter to develop the new survey.
The questionnaire will cover a wider range of issues that are important to patients when they visit their GP practice and includes questions on:
- aspects of the surgery environment and helpfulness of reception staff
- getting through on the phone including for consultations or test results
- accessing GP appointments (including questions supporting assessment of QOF achievement on 48 hour access and advance booking)
- waiting time in the surgery
- seeing a preferred doctor
- satisfaction with practice opening hours
- aspects of the consultation with doctors and nurses at the practice
- overall satisfaction with care received.
The ideas is to expand the survey questions beyond fast and convenient access to GP appointments in order to provide a richer assessment of patients’ experiences when they access their local GP service.
This addresses patients’ concerns over the previous survey that it restricted their say to only narrow definitions of access.
The new survey will help GP practices and PCTs to understand better their patients’ needs and wishes by seeking views on access in its broadest sense.
The survey questionnaire will also provide valuable information on two other distinct areas:
- planning of care for patients with long term conditions
- patient experiences of accessing local out of hours care.
The DH said that it was sending the questionnaire to more patients this year to make sure they received a good response number and to offset the possibility that a longer questionnaire than in previous years may put off some patients from responding.
The results will be made available to GP practices and PCTs in May of next year and will be published fully in July.