Improving the patient experience in General Practice with the General Practice Assessment Questionnaire (GPAQ)

Patient feedback results from the 2006 – 2007 survey

Patients at this surgery may have recently participated in the GPAQ patient satisfaction questionnaire during the summer months of 2006 and the practice staff in conjunction with the Leicestershire Primary Care Audit Group who facilitated the project would like to take this opportunity to extend our gratitude to all those who took the time to fill out the questionnaires supplied. The surgery is now in a position to feedback the results of this survey to patients.

• 89.3% of patients at this surgery claimed that they rated its opening hours as Good, Very good, or Excellent. • 97.9% of patients claimed that they were treated by the receptionists in a Good, Very good or Excellent manner. • 57.9% of patients said that could see their usual doctor within 2 working days. • 67% of patients said that they could see any doctor within the next working day. • 71% of patients claimed that they had to wait for less than ten minutes before their consultation began. • 89.05% of patients rated the communication skills of their doctors as Good, Very Good, or Excellent. • 92.09% of patients reported that they were Completely Satisfied, Very Satisfied or Fairly Satisfied with the surgery as a whole.

A measure of the service provided to patients by this surgery can be gauged by the six GPAQ Scale Scores, and the national average figures produced by the National Primary Care Research and Development Unit at the University of Manchester. These scores are defined below on a scale of 0 – 100%:

• ACCESS: an idea of how easy it is to get access to a particular GP, any GP or emergency medical services • RECEPTIONISTS: how well you are treated by the receptionists in this surgery • CONTINUITY: how often you are seen by a particular doctor • COMMUNICATION: how well your doctors empathise, listen and communicate with you • ENABLEMENT: how well the doctors equip you to cope with and understand your illness • OVERALL: the overall satisfaction of the patients with the service received at this surgery

The graph below shows how this surgery performs, displaying the difference in percent between the surgery’s scale score to the Manchester National Benchmarks:

For more information on GPAQ, visit the Leicester PCAG website at
www.leicester-pcag.org.uk