- GP practice
Fallowfield Medical Centre
Report from 28 February 2024 assessment
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Fallowfield Medical Centre is a NHS GP practice which provides primary care services for patients living in Fallowfield, Manchester. We carried out an announced responsive assessment of one quality statement, equity in access, under the key question 'Responsive' at Fallowfield Medical Centre on 8th March 2024. We carried out the assessment as part of our work to understand how practices are working to try to meet people’s 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, in 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. At this assessment we found that overall people could access services when they need to, without physical or digital barriers, including out of normal hours and in an emergency. The practice understood the challenges to patient access and responded to patient needs including those who were most likely to have difficulty accessing care. The practice sought out and used feedback and other data/ information to continually monitor and improve access, understood the challenges to patient access and responded accordingly. Overall, the practice is rated as good and the key question responsive continues to be rated as providing a good service.
People's experience of this service
In the 2023 National GP Patient Survey, the practice’s data demonstrated that patient satisfaction with GP practice appointment times was (64%). Data relating to how easy it was to get through to the practice by phone was (57%) and the overall experience of making an appointment (56%). The data highlighted that the performance achieved by the practice for these indicators was slightly higher or in line with both the national and local averages. One indicator for (the percentage of respondents to the GP Patient Survey who were satisfied with the appointment (or appointments) they were offered) scored 68.4% which was slightly below the local and national average of 72%. Prior to our assessment, we invited the practice to contact a sample of patients on our behalf so that people could give feedback on their experience regarding access. We received feedback from 7 patients of which 4 directly related to access. Three responses were positive and one was negative.