When will they pick up – a review of telephone messages used by GP practices in Hackney

It was apparent from the feedback Healthwatch Hackney receives residents, that many were complaining about how difficult is was to get through to their GP practice. For example, many said they were kept waiting for a long time for their call to get answered, and that this was impacting on their ability to access primary health care.

As a result, we decided to systematically review phone messages and the time taken to answer calls. This was with the aim of improving the patient experience when telephoning GP practices.

Our review was designed to evaluate the general and out-of-hours messages for all 38 GP practices in the borough. We listened to the messages and assess their content, tone and length as well as identify examples of best practice.

The review revealed a wide variation in the information provided in the recorded messages, and the way the messages were delivered, as well as the length of the messages. There was also a variation in how long it took to answer calls.

31/38 practices acknowledged receipt of the individual practice reports we produced and welcomed our findings and recommendations.

An example of their feedback includes:

“Thanks for the very useful feedback. I can confirm we are in the process of procuring a new cloud base phone system which is able to support the very good practices highlighted by your report. We hope to be up and running by the end of the third quarter. In the meantime, we have reviewed the procedure in reception in order to offer better support to those less favoured by our existing system.” (London Fields Medical Centre)

Executive Director Sally Beavan said

We are delighted by the outcome of this review and the warm reception of our recommendations.

Healthwatch Hackney will continue reviewing the response time and the quality of the recorded messages at our local GP practices. We will work in collaboration with practice teams to support them to continue to offer an accessible telephone service. This will include continuing to share patient feedback as we receive it and sharing resources or examples of good practice

When will they pick up report