Health and Care Experience Survey 2013/14 Volume 1: National Results

8 GP Practice - Overall Questions

How patients are treated by staff

8.1 Respondents were asked whether they agreed with two overall statements regarding their treatment by staff:

• I am treated with respect
• I am treated with compassion and understanding

8.2 91 per cent of patients agreed or strongly agreed that they were treated with respect, a modest increase in positive scoring from the previous survey. However, it is worth noting that the question wording has been changed slightly since the previous survey (Table 6).

8.3 84 per cent of patients agreed or strongly agreed that they were treated with compassion and understanding. This represents a 4 percentage point decrease from the equivalent question in the previous survey. However, as with the above question, the wording of the question has been changed since the previous survey and this may account for some of the difference between the two results (Table 6).

Table 6: How are you treated by the staff at your GP practice*

*Question wordings have been updated since 2011/12

Overall experience

8.4 Patients were asked to rate their overall experience of the care provided by their GP surgery.

8.5 87 per cent of patients rated their overall experience of care by the GP surgery as excellent or good, a fall of 2 percentage point from the 2011/12. This is not surprising given the fall in positive responses across many of the aspects relating to care provided by the GP surgery (Figure 12).

Figure 12: Overall rating of care provided by GP practice

Top five and bottom five results

8.6 This section contains the top and bottom 5 questions for GP practices assessed using the percentage positive scoring used as the basis for NHS Board and GP practice reports. More details are available in the annex.

Top 5

8.7 The top four questions that respondents answered most positively were all related to medicines. The final question in the top 5 related to patients having enough time with the nurse (Table 7).

Table 7: Top five results

Bottom 5

8.8 The bottom five questions highlight that, as in the previous survey, access to GP services is an issue for patients. 4 of the bottom 5 questions relate to this aspect of the survey. The other question, which was the most negatively answered, related to how mistakes are dealt with (Table 8).

Table 8: Bottom five results

Changes since the 2011/12 survey

8.9 Taken as a whole, the results suggest slightly less positive experience across most aspects of GP care.

8.10 Of the 34 scored questions which are directly comparable to the previous survey, 9 have stayed the same, 25 have got worse, and only 2 have improved.

8.11 Not included in these figures is the question relating to referrals by the GP, which has been expanded to include social care referrals and was therefore considered not directly comparable. If included, this would represent a third question showing improvement since 2011/12.