Friends and Family Feedback – June 2025

We extend our sincere thanks to all 240+ patients who took the time to share their valuable insights with us during June 2025. Your input is incredibly important and helps us identify both our strengths and areas where we can do even better.

We’re pleased to report that an impressive 85% of you rated our service as either ‘Very Good’ or ‘Good’ last month. This reflects the dedication and hard work of our entire team, and we are very proud of this positive feedback.

While this is still a strong endorsement, we did notice a slight decrease in the number of responses received during June compared to previous months, and the ‘Very Good’ or ‘Good’ rating, though still high, was a modest drop from prior results. We are taking this seriously and will be thoroughly reviewing these trends and discussing them as a team to understand the contributing factors and ensure we continue to meet your expectations.

Thank you again for your continued support and for helping us improve.

Understanding Your Experiences: Key Themes from Your Feedback

We’ve analysed all your comments and identified several common themes reflecting your experiences:

• Appointments & Waiting Times: Many of you highlighted challenges in securing timely appointments, and expressed frustration with long waits for appointments. We also received comments about the efficiency of our AccuRx and telephone appointment systems.
• Communication & Understanding: We heard about instances where communication could be improved, a perception that patient notes aren’t always fully reviewed before consultations, and a need for clearer information.
• Staff Professionalism & Empathy: Many of you highly praised individual staff members – nurses, physios, and doctors – for being friendly, professional, empathetic, and providing excellent care. However, we also received feedback regarding instances of less positive interactions, all feedback is taken extremely seriously, shared and discussed with all staff.
• Telephone vs. Face-to-Face Appointments: There’s a preference for face-to-face appointments, especially for complex health issues or for patients with hearing difficulties.
• Prescriptions & Referrals: Some experiences highlighted issues with prescriptions, such as medication availability and delays in receiving alternatives, as well as concerns about long waits for referrals or difficulties in getting a referral.

Our Commitment to Improvement: Areas We’re Working On

Your feedback directly informs our action plan. We are committed to reviewing and improving the following three key areas:

1. Enhancing Our Appointment System & Reducing Waiting Times: This is our top priority. We are actively reviewing our online triage process to ensure it provides fair and accessible options for everyone. We are also exploring all avenues to increase the availability of both telephone and face-to-face appointments, with the goal of reducing waiting times for call-backs and consultations. We want to make access to our services quicker and more reliable for all patients, including those with work commitments.
2. Improving Communication & Patient Engagement: We are carefully reviewing your comments and exploring strategies to improve our communication and patient engagement. Our commitment is to improve the clarity and timeliness of the information you receive concerning test results, prescriptions, and referrals, and we will be discussing these areas as a team with a view to making improvements.
3. Streamlining Prescription & Referral Management: To enhance our prescription services and reduce the possibility of errors, we encourage patients to order repeat medications whenever possible via the NHS App. Requests submitted through the app come directly into our clinical system, which helps streamline the process and minimise potential discrepancies. We are also continuously reviewing our prescription processes to address medication availability and ensure prompt communication regarding alternatives. Furthermore, we are always working to ensure that our referral system is as efficient and accurate as possible, with a view to reducing delays, minimising incorrect referrals, and improving your understanding and control over your referral options.

Celebrating Our Strengths: Positive Feedback to Our Team

It’s equally important to acknowledge the fantastic work being done by our dedicated team. We want to share these positive highlights with both our staff and you, our patients:

1. Exceptional Staff Professionalism & Empathy: We are incredibly proud of the numerous commendations our staff received. Our Nurses, Jo, Adina, Mary, Judith and Jess, physios like Frankie & Ken, and doctors like Dr. Adesoye, Dr. Aksoy, and Dr. Patel were consistently praised for being friendly, welcoming, caring, empathetic, professional, and excellent at listening and explaining. This truly reflects the high quality of care provided by a significant portion of our team.
2. Effective Consultations & Problem Resolution: Many of you shared positive experiences where doctors took the time to listen, understood your concerns, provided clear explanations, and developed effective action plans, leaving you feeling better and with your questions answered. We are delighted to hear about instances of swift action, helpful advice, and successful resolution of medical issues.
3. Efficient & Caring Service in Critical Situations: We were deeply moved by the powerful feedback regarding our response in critical situations. Patients having extremely quick and positive outcomes during same day care scenarios.

We are committed to learning from your feedback, both positive and constructive, to continually improve our services. Thank you for taking the time to share your experiences with us.