A PATIENT survey to determine how people prefer to access GP appointments has highlighted telephone triage as a favoured means.

Healthwatch Cornwall (HC), an independent organisation that gives people the opportunity to create positive change in health and social care services, conducted a face-to-face research project at six GP practices across Cornwall, in rural and urban locations, to discover more about the options for patients to book appointments and seek advice.

Chief executive Debbie Pritchard said: ’This work has shown that patients are open to a variety of access options but most patient satisfaction with the ease of booking appointments, both on the day and in advance, lies with practices that use an established telephone triage system.

’It also indicated that some patients did not know about their surgeries range of choices for booking appointments such as online and requests for a GP phone-back and how those options can differ widely from practice to practice.’

During 2015, HC heard from more than 150 people about the difficulties they have faced when trying to secure an appointment with a doctor and instigated the targeted sample to help determine what was hindering access, where there was good practice and to ascertain what people wanted.

Initially, all GP practices were contacted by telephone to ask them about their booking systems and from that selected surgeries with varying booking processes were involved.

Three booking systems were looked at in detail: telephone triage where a patient will speak with a GP who will decide if a face-to-face appointment is necessary; calling by 8.30am to book on the day and up to three months in advance, to request a call-back and to request an evening appointment and as previous but without the call-back and evening options.

Respondents that used telephone triage found it the easiest way to book an appointment on the day with 97% of response saying it was easy or very easy but only 56% of those with the most access options said they found it easy.

The survey highlighted that only a third of participants felt they needed to see a GP in person, although email and online video contact were the least preferred and that those who were already using a telephone triage system were the most flexible in how they accessed their doctor.

Ms Pritchard added: ’We are encouraging GP practices that are perhaps struggling with bookings to re-evaluate their systems and look to offer alternatives such as telephone triage and to further promote the different choice to a face-to-face appointment.’

Read the full report at www.healthwatchcornwall.co.uk and leave feedback about your GP practice. Alternatively all 08000 381281.