- GP practice
OHP-Yardley Wood Health Centre
Report from 7 March 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
OHP-Yardley Wood Health Centre is a NHS GP practice which provides primary care services to patients in Birmingham. The practice is rated as good overall, with all key questions rated as good, apart from Responsive, which is rated as requires improvement. We carried out an announced assessment of one quality statement, equity of access, under the key question Responsive at OHP-Yardley Wood Health Centre on the 12 March 2024. We carried out the assessment as part of our work to understand how practices are working to try to meet peoples demands for access and to better understand the experiences of people who use services and providers. We recognise the work that GP practices have been engaged in to continue to provide safe, quality care to the people they serve. We know staff are carrying this out whilst the demand for general practice remains exceptionally high, with more appointments being provided than ever. However, this challenging context, access to general practice remains a concern for people. Our strategy makes a commitment to deliver regulation driven by people’s needs and experiences of care. The assessment of the quality statement equity of access includes looking at what practices are doing innovatively to improve patient access to primary care and sharing this information to drive improvement. We found that the practice had organised services to meet patients’ needs, particularly those who were most likely to have difficulty accessing care. The practice used feedback and other information to monitor and improve access. The practice had been proactive in taking action to improve access, particularly to how easy it was for patients to contact the practice, but this was not yet reflected consistently in the GP patient survey data or in all other sources of patient feedback.
People's experience of this service
In the 2023 National GP Patient Survey, the practice’s results for the 4 questions on access we reviewed were below national average. Patient satisfaction with how easy it was to get through to someone on the phone was particularly low at 23% compared to the national average of 50%. Trends in patient satisfaction showed the practice had historically been below the national average over the last 5 years but had shown signs of improvement in the 2021 and 2022 surveys before falling again in 2023. Patient feedback gathered by the practice was much more positive. Although not directly comparable to the National GP Patient Survey, monthly inhouse patient surveys undertaken by the practice showed increasing levels of satisfaction over the last 12 months which had coincided with significant changes to the appointment system and the introduction of total triage. We recognise the pressure that practices are currently working under, and the efforts staff are making to maintain levels of access for their patients. At the same time, our strategy makes a commitment to deliver regulation driven by people’s needs and experiences of care. Although we saw the practice had taken action to improve access, this was not yet reflected in the GP patient survey data.