Survey finds patients across Portsmouth area happy with overall GP experience

The results from this year's GP Patient Survey found 81 per cent of people in Portsmouth who took part rated their surgery as good.

In the area covered by south eastern Hampshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), the figure was 84 per cent while the Fareham and Gosport CCG area was 78 per cent.

Practices are now looking at ways to improve their services from increasing the number of call handlers, introducing e-consults on their websites and working together to offer patients more choice.

Overall, the CCGs said they were happy with the results.

Dr Barbara Rushton, the clinical lead for south eastern Hampshire CCG, said: '˜In general, we have to be pleased with the findings.

'˜We know that patients in some areas sometimes have frustrations getting through to their GP practice or making an appointment and clearly there remains work to be done to try to make improvements there.

'˜We know that we are as a nation living longer - often with greater frailty and more complex conditions; that our GP practices are facing more demand for their services than ever before and that there are challenges over staffing levels in some areas, both locally and nationally.'

Other key findings of the GP Patient Survey were on average across the three CCGs 88 per cent of patients said their GP receptionist was helpful; 74 per cent found it easy to use their GP practice website and 71 per cent were happy with the type of appointment offered.

Dr Elizabeth Fellows, who chairs Portsmouth CCG, said: '˜Our CCGs are working with their practices individually and collectively to try to improve services where we can.

'˜Some of our GP practices are working collaboratively to pool skills and resources on things from home visiting services to same-day access.

'˜This survey tells us that people are generally satisfied with the services they receive from their local practices, but we need to use the findings to look at areas where the public perception of performance shows that we could be doing better.'