Agenda item

Emma Whitby, Chief Executive of Healthwatch Islington, presented on the Healthwatch Annual Report and Resident Feedback on GP Services. 

Healthwatch Annual Report

The committee was taken through a presentation on the Healthwatch Islington update and work planning presentation and the following points were noted:

·       One of the main Healthwatch priorities were to improve ensuring improved health & social care outcomes for all local residents and is part of a national network (in which we lead on impact measurement). Healthwatch is part funded by LBI to fulfil statutory functions of Health and Social Care Act 2013): the organisation gathered and reported views on health and social care and had a role in providing people with information on services Healthwatch aimed to be a collaborative, ‘critical friend’ approach, working in partnership wherever we can.

·       The committee was given an update on Healthwatch work in 2022/2023. Main highlights included that 1,133 people shared their experiences of health and social care services with us. 390 residents came to us for advice and information about topics such as mental health and the cost-of-living crisis. Reports include GP Access, Pharmacy, Cancer screening, Long Covid, Smoking cessation and pulmonary rehab, LGBTQI+ residents’ experiences of health and care services.

·       Volunteers: 49 outstanding volunteers and have recently worked with corporate volunteers, volunteers across 135 days to make care better for our community: Hosting stalls at community venues to gather feedback on services and raise awareness of dangers of high blood pressure, giving over 800 blood pressure checks to local residents. Mystery shoppers rang all Islington GP practices to evaluate the quality of messaging on GP phone lines.

·       Volunteer digital champions and learners, and volunteer researchers came together to identify ways to improve how information is presented on GP websites.

·       A special thanks was given to Geraldine Peterson, a volunteer, who has led and worked well on the digital transformation work.

·       Our partners: Diverse Communities Health Voice: Since 2014 we’ve raised around £560,000 for the partnership to help us reach residents across language and cultural barriers.

·       Equalities Toolkit for mental health providers: co-producing a tool to help us all provide more equitably. Clarion, Cloudesley, Digital Unite, Good Things Foundation to help ensure our digital offer is robust and our volunteers have access to great training. However, there is very limited funding. 3 Mental Health Partnerships Coordinators. Helping to bring mental health support out in to the community.

·       Our plans for 2023/2024: Continuing our work to improve access to GP services and mental health services and Gathering feedback on home care services. Working with Evidence Islington to improve how feedback from residents is gathered and used by statutory services. Our ‘Just One Thing’ survey is helping us identify new priorities based on resident feedback.

·       Equalities Pledges: As a result of Healthwatch Islington’s work, all commissioned providers are being asked to sign up to three equalities pledges (this includes us): We have been successful in taking steps to improve ethnic diversity of our Board, the diversity of our staff team, and the diversity of gender and age of the community represented through our partnerships and work programme.

Resident Feedback on GP Services

The committee was taken through a presentation on the Healthwatch Islington GP Access:

·       GP Web Content: A volunteer researcher looked at all practice websites in 2020 and again in 2022. C1 Primary Care Network commissioned Healthwatch Islington to run workshops for some of our digital learners to test web accessibility and have liaised with Healthwatch England on accessibility best practice. ICB colleagues have taken our findings and developed some guidance for practices. Practices have all been offered external support to develop their sites. And Primary Care Networks are now employing Digital Transformation leads to work on phone and web access amongst other things.

·       Some key findings: this included: Avoid ‘pop ups’, Use the language that the patient will use (online booking rather than e-consult) or explain the terms (triage, meaning we’ll need to ask you some questions to help understand who at the practice is best suited to help you and how urgently), Keep sites up to date, Promote the fact that you’ll be seen even if you can’t prove your address ‘safe surgeries’.  Also to be explicit about all appointment types available including the option for face to face, and how to book appointments for others. Promote ‘what to do when the practice is closed’ and the role of pharmacy, repeat prescriptions and accessing medical records, self-referral. Make search/ interpreting and disability access functions clear (icons don’t always mean anything to the patient). And be clear about adjustments available for consultations.

·       GP Phone lines: volunteers called practices to listen to the voice messages, they timed the call and noted the content. Messages varied from 20 seconds to 3 minutes.

·       Key suggestions included: Keep messages concise and up-to-date with the most important information first Ideally there’d be some standardisation across practices Is Covid messaging/ Covid vaccination messaging still needed? Limit the key messages before the patient joins the the queue to speak to someone. Once they join the queue, then more messages can be relayed to the patient. Patients should be told whether they are in the queue to speak to a member of staff or not and their number in the queue, so that they don’t’ stay on the phone unnecessarily. Information should not be delivered too quickly so that patients can easily take in key information. Self-referral -callers should be informed of the possibility of self-referring to services such as physiotherapy, podiatry and ICOPE without having to wait for a GP appointment.

The following points were raised in the discussion:

·       A Member raised concerns that those with cognitive needs may be feeling left behind and how can they navigate the system. It was commented that younger generations were sometimes needed to help those less confident with technology to navigate online systems and websites.

·       Healthwatch Camden were working on a project on vaping, and we are looking at ways to incorporate these findings to Islington.

·       The Chair raised the issues of accessibility from certain groups such as the elderly population with the increasing digitization as well as issues with working people and the struggle to get appointments on the day by calling at 8am. The committee was assured that practices need to offer flexibility as practices are best places to make sure patients can access them properly.

·       The committee noted that there should be more communication to residents around the whole offer of healthcare such as out of hours GP appointments.

The Chair thanked Healthwatch Islington for all the great work.