The GP Patient Survey - and why it's not enough
The GP Patient Survey is happening more regularly and covering more measures. It even makes a difference to GP practice funding. But it's not enough if a practice really wants to listen to its patients
Since April 2009 the new GP Patient Survey - a postal patient satisfaction survey run by the Department of Health - has been compulsory for GP practices and instead of being run annually, it now takes place quarterly. This is one of a number of trends towards increasing focus on patient satisfaction in the NHS.
The GPPS invites responses, by post, from a randomly selected sample of registered patients for every GP practice. The results of the survey are an important measure for local Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) and some measures in the survey help determine practice funding for those practices opting in to the QOF (Quality and Outcomes Framework), for whom the survey results support the assessment of the patient experience indicators.
But the postal GP Patient Survey has its critics – notably the BMA (British Medical Association), whose GP Committee Chairman Dr. Laurence Buckman said in January 2009,
"It is… a shame that the government has discontinued the practice-based patient survey, which was given to patients immediately after a visit to the practice. This gave very accurate patient feedback about the quality of consultation with the GP or nurse, something the new survey will fail to do. It can be very difficult trying to remember how you felt about a consultation which took place six months ago. It means the results of the new postal survey may not give the true picture of GP services."
As Dr. Buckman says, one of the problems with the survey is that it involves patients being asked to recall experiences from up to 6 months previously, which makes the results less immediate, and it makes it harder for practices to act upon the results quickly or identify cause and effect.
It's for this reason that the Department of Health has published a report encouraging PCTs and community care providers to set up their own 'real time' feedback capture methods.
"To inform decision making and transform services, the NHS should aim to make systematic use of a mixture of feedback methods, including those that deliver real-time feedback."
Read more here about the DoH's recent report encouraging PCTs to embrace 'real time' patient feedback and satisfaction monitoring.
And that's also why PatientPulse offers continuous 'real-time' surveying of what patients think, day by day, week by week - giving practice managers the most up-to-date trends to discuss in every practice meeting, and keeping practices closer to what's happening RIGHT NOW, and a way of tracking whether improvements are really happening.
We also think there are other important limitations to the GPPS:
- The GPPS isn't open to all. Because it selects patients randomly it is not an open invitation to patients to share their views.
- The GPPS is a quantitative survey. All it gives you are the numbers, not the richness of a patient's story about their experience - the sort of story which leads to real insights about how your practice is performaing and what needs to change.
- It's a one-way communication from patient to practice. There's no chance to communicate in the other direction, about the changes you're making.
PatientPulse not only invites all patients to participate, but the survey system, tailored to GP practices, allows patients to tell their story, in their own words, and gives the practice the tools to respond with communications to all patients who choose to receive them. It's a total 360 degree feedback solution which works hand-in-hand with the GPPS, even matching the subject matter of the GPPS questions to complement it perfectly.
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