As you will know I have issued lots of updates on the ongoing problems arising from the rushed transition to the new GP Medical Hub.
Since we first became aware of issues, I have been in daily contact with the Swindon CCG, IMH & the Hub management team to push and demand urgent improvements. I have also been in contact with senior staff at the GWH as I wanted to make sure that if any knock-on effects were being felt, these could be used to help me push for urgent improvements.
After our first visit to the new Hub, we received assurances that steps would be taken to address the issues we raised. As many will know from previous updates, it took longer than I wanted it to for the new site to acknowledge issues with the phones – this was a source of huge frustration to myself and many residents. But after lots of pushing and phone calls with the powers that be, we got them to a point where the problem was acknowledged and additional investment was made to tackle the issues.
So the current situation as I understand it is:
• Telephones - This week has seen more call handlers answering the phones with additional staff taken on. These new recruits will take the capacity for answering calls above historic levels.
• Those monitoring the data (now that the phone system has been sorted) have reported: We are seeing significant improvement in the call response times at the Hub since the additional staff have started to ‘go live.’ Tuesday morning has historically been a busy time and this remains true. Today we have already received 596 calls (as of 10am). The average wait has been reduced to 6 minutes and the longest wait has been 13 minutes. As we are able to handle more calls at any one time, we currently have no calls waiting.
• Routine appointments are now being offered for December. There was an issue that these only went live just over 3 weeks in advance, when usually it is 4-6 weeks. They accepted this and said that going forward this will not be the case: This delay is due to the team working to standardise the clinical rotas across the surgery sites so patients receive equitable service from the practices. Standardised rotas at all sites are expected to be live in January 2019. I apologise the December rota was delayed and patients have been unable to be offered routine appointments earlier this week. Thank you for highlighting this issue.
Councillor Oliver Donachie attended the Hub on Monday morning. He reported a noticeable difference with more staff and an acknowledgement that they were now ready to meet the demand. I have also been in daily contact with them again this week to make sure we are finally seeing the improvements that are needed, following the extra investment which has been made to push these through. I shall be attending the Hub again where I also hope to see a noticeable difference.
One remaining issue that has been raised by the Hub themselves is the number of people who are giving up on the call – with the average time for a person to abandon the call at 3 mins 17 seconds. I do hope that now calls are being answered much more quickly, that trust will be rebuilt and people won’t abandon the call so quickly.
Part of this links with the issue of the queue position number. As the Hub now covers 60,000 people it is going to give you a bigger queue number than you had under the old system as there are more people contacting one site. However that doesn’t mean that you should be on the phone any longer now that they have the additional staff. Therefore the Hub decided to remove the queue number as people were assuming that because they were a high number in the queue, they would be waiting for a long time. The queue number reflected the number of people phoning one site, rather than the length of time it would take for the call to be answered. I am happy to continue feeding back people’s thoughts on this but I have told the Hub that more needs to be done to prevent people from abandoning the calls now that telephone wait times are back under control. To be fair, the Hub have acknowledged this and are working to ensure that less people give up the call after a few minutes.
Finally, last week I had discussions with the Health Secretary Matt Hancock, as well as officials from the Department of Health, to keep them in the loop. To reiterate – neither myself nor the Secretary of State have any powers over the decision making process involved with this change. Clinical commissioners are led by GPs who use their clinical expertise to assess and prioritise those treatments that provide the safest and most effective outcomes for the population as a whole. Clinicians and local NHS leaders must be given the flexibility to develop local solutions, and be trusted to do the job they have been tasked with to meet the needs of their patients and local populations. We are clear that patients should be able to access the best possible treatments based on quality of care.
In terms of accountability and scrutiny, Clinical Commissioning Groups need to be assured of the quality of services they commission, taking into account both the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines and the Care Quality Commission's data about service providers.
So in conclusion, the message has been received that these problems have been unacceptable, the whole process should have been carried out at a much slower rate, and this should have been soft-tested. Following this, the improvements that were desperately needed are beginning to show and we are seeing and hearing reports of this from users of the services.
As ever a big thank you to all of the residents that fed in their experiences to me – without this correspondence & evidence, I would not have been able to demand & present the urgent need for improvements.
There will continue to be certain queries which arise, as there were under the old system, so please do continue to contact me – justin.tomlinson.mp@parliament.uk.
As your MP, I will continue to work closely with the CCG and I will continue to apply scrutiny to ensure a good level of service.
