29/10/2026
GP Practice Improvement work : A Patient Update
The practice, Patient Participation Group (PPG) and NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care Board (ICB) met to discuss patient concerns, progress reported by the practice and how improvements should be monitored.
What has the practice reported?
The practice reported that routine appointment waiting times have reduced from around 12 weeks to around 6 weeks. This is encouraging, but waiting times and patients’ wider experiences remain important areas for scrutiny.
Changes have also been made to the management of online requests. However, patients continue to report difficulties getting through by telephone, uncertainty about what happens after submitting a request and concerns about whether follow-up actions have been completed.
What did our October patient feedback reveal?
Our analysis shows a difference between the good care many patients receive once they see a clinician and the difficulties some experience getting there.
✍️ Concerns raised:
Long telephone queues.
Repeated patient contacts to clarify what happens next.
Delays for routine appointments.
Unclear updates about requests.
Missed appointment notifications.
Difficulties with digital access.
Reasonable adjustments not always meeting patients’ needs.
👍 Positive experiences:
Reports of prompt urgent appointments.
Helpful staff.
Effective clinical care.
These reports do not represent every patient’s experience, but highlight positive experiences and issues requiring further attention.
❓What should patients expect?
NHS guidance provides important benchmarks for access to general practice:
Urgent needs: Clinically urgent cases should receive appropriate action on the same day.
Non-urgent appointments: NHS access-recovery guidance sets an expectation of an appointment within two weeks where clinically appropriate.
Clear next steps: Under the 2026/27 GP contract, patients making non-urgent requests should be told what happens next by the end of the next working day. This is not a guarantee of an appointment or resolution by then.
Sources: NHS England – GP contract changes for 2026/27 and Primary care access recovery plan.
👉 What happens next?
📞Telephone access remains a priority. The ICB will monitor call-backs and abandoned calls, with relevant data to be shared with the PPG subject to the practice’s agreement.
Other actions discussed include a patient digital-support session, clearer information about the wider healthcare team, better promotion of the practice newsletter, staffing and recruitment, and following up concerns about access to ADHD services.
The practice presented a document setting out areas for improvement.
📌The PPG asked for clearer, measurable targets and milestones with timescales so that progress can be assessed. An updated document is awaited.
How will the PPG monitor progress?
Our central question remains:
‘Can a patient enter the CGHB system once, understand what will happen next, receive appropriate action within a reasonable timeframe, and know when their issue has actually been resolved — without having to chase?’
We will ask again how patients found November’s patient experience in the last week of the month.
We will use patient feedback and available practice data to examine the whole patient journey, not simply individual waiting-time figures.
Our role is to represent patients honestly, acknowledge genuine improvements and continue to challenge where experience falls short of reasonable expectations.
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