Sothall Feedback

As you are hopefully aware Sothall was taken over by Primary Care Sheffield (PCS) in January. PCS recognises that Sothall has been a well-run practice and has delivered excellent patient care. However, with the previous partners retiring we need to ensure we are moving with the times and introducing a total triage model to meet our contractual requirements.

Total triage means all non-planned requests are reviewed by a clinician before an appointment is given. This can be beneficial because sometimes a prescription, quick answer, or phone call can avoid an appointment, it also means all patients have been clinically assessed to ensure they don’t need to be seen urgently if given an appointment on a future date. Patients will be able to contact the practice online or over the phone as normal. By allowing those that can go online it will reduce the number of phone calls to the practice.

In our other practices the reduction of calls has been around 40%. We also want to review some of the practices around home visits and times people call, to support better access for everyone. We would like to work with patients to understand what you need to know and how best to deliver this, to make it work for you, so please can you complete the survey.
1.Our total triage model will allow patients to call or go online and self-service. We will not allow people to walk in to make an appointment with a GP or ANP (unless there is an accessibility need), as we will ask lots of questions and this is difficult in a reception area.

Do you believe this provides enough ways to contact the practice?
2.One of the issues we hope to address, is ensuring staff can finish work on time. The practice has struggled to recruit and retain GPs as they are often still in work hours after their finish time. We know staff turnover then impacts the consistency of care. One of the complicating factors has been a core number of patients that contact the practice with issues just before they are due to close. To address this, we want to encourage people to contact us with home visit requests and urgent same day needs before 11am.

Do you feel this is reasonable in most cases (we recognise there will always be exceptions)?
3.Patients can set up online accounts weeks before go-live. How far in advance would you like access to the system?
4.Sothall has an unusually high number of home visit requests. Home visits are very useful for very ill or housebound patients, but each home visit takes up to 5 times longer than an appointment in the practice. We intend to review home visits and keep them for those that are very ill, or housebound.

Do you feel this is fair?
5.Please identify below how likely you want to hear more about the new system (please choose as many as you’d like)
6.What is your age group?
7.What is your Gender?
8.What is your ethnic group?