Treating access:
A toolkit for GP practices to improve
their patients’ access to primary care
Why a toolkit for practices to improve access?
Good access to primary care services is important to our
patients, to the NHS Boards, to the Scottish Government and very
much to general practitioners and their staff. It is one of
the fundamental building blocks of a quality practice.
Many practices in Scotland provide an excellent level of access
for their patients. However, some practices struggle to
provide as good a level of access and would be keen to improve
this.
Patients certainly see good access as an important
characteristic of general practice. The Scottish Government has
also recognised a need for patients in some practices to experience
improved access. Hence, amongst all the stakeholders, there
has been a desire to develop a fit for purpose toolkit that can
help those practices for whom access is a problem.
RCGP Scotland has developed this toolkit after wide
consultation. The toolkit follows a medical model which will
be very familiar to practices. It describes the symptoms that
exist when access is a problem, how to accurately diagnose the
level of access present in a practice and gives advice on how to
treat access problems where they exist. There is a health
warning around this which is, if we treat access like a long term
condition, there are analogies with other long term conditions in
that we cannot necessarily completely cure the problem, it may get
worse at times and recover again. It will continuously need
to be properly managed.
It pulls together in one place a range of material, some more
familiar and more relevant to some practices than others, but all
designed as a user friendly resource to bring about practical
improvement. The tips on how to improve access are pertinent
to a wide range of practices working in different ways and not just
to those which use a traditional appointment system.
To
download the toolkit here click here
Link to all downloadable documents