Oakham Medical Practice Enter and View report
Patients at Oakham Medical Practice (OMP) shared their views and recent experiences of services at the Practice in our latest Enter and View report.
We wanted to explore how patients are experiencing the many changes that have been made at the Practice throughout the last year or so.
Working in collaboration with the OMP Patient Participation Group, we interviewed 82 people across 6 visits to the Practice in August and September this year. In addition, 1055 people completed our survey, which was available both online and in hardcopy.
Our findings included:
- The majority of people interviewed said the quality of medical care is good (82%) compared with 47% of survey respondents giving the same rating.
- Patients are more confident and happier to see health care professionals other than GPs and the practice nurses are valued highly.
- During the visits, almost equal numbers of patients told us they found it easy to make an appointment as found it difficult. This shows a variance against survey responses where just under one third of patients said they find it easy to make appointments and just under two thirds said they find it difficult.
- When asked “what one thing about the Practice would you change?” the biggest proportion of survey respondents (42%) wanted more appointments to be available.
Our recommendations included:
- Simplify the online appointment booking by providing clarity about appointment codes and make more doctors’ appointments available to book online throughout the day.
- Provide more face-to-face appointments and offer continuity of care.
- Synchronise prescribing for patients taking multiple medications.
- Continue making improvements. OMP efforts over 2023 have been recognised and appreciated by patients but some doubts and anxieties remain.
“By engaging with so many people, we can confidently report that many patients have appreciated the efforts made by staff to improve the service. We know, however, that there are some seemingly intractable issues faced by many practices including OMP: how to improve the access to appointments that patients ask for, whilst at the same time offering continuity of care by named professionals.
“Oakham Medical Practice supported this Enter and View project as an independent, in-depth review of how patients have been experiencing the service during this year. We are delighted that partners and staff have listened to what patients are saying and look forward to continuing to work with them to improve the service.”
