We previously launched and promoted a patient consultation process on a proposed merger with Boundary Court Surgery, a GP practice that we are already co-located with and whom already share their administrative back-office functions. The consultation period has now concluded and the results are as follows.
Total respondents: 200 – 195 digital responses (SMS / website / by email) / 5 in paper form.
Registered Surgery: Majority of respondents were registered with Chalfont Road Surgery but there were sufficient responses from patients registered with both practices.
- Boundary Court Surgery – 83 responses
- Chalfont Surgery – 117 responses.
Patient and/or carer: Vast majority of respondents were patients themselves, but we also received responses from carers.
- Patients – 200
- Carers – 8
Long-Term Conditions: Just under half of respondents considered themselves to have a long-term condition, which accounted for 90 respondents.
Gender: 59% of respondents identified themselves as female, 41% as male and 1 respondent listed their gender as other.
Age: There was a variety of responses from different age brackets, providing a good cross-section sample of patients.
- Under 24 years – 6
- 25-50 years – 67
- 54-74 years – 107
- Over 75 years – 19
Ethnicity:
- White – British, Irish, Gypsy or Irish Traveller, White Polish or Any other White background – 73
- Mixed or Multiple ethnic groups – White and Black Caribbean, White and Black African, White and Asian, Any other Mixed or Multiple ethnic background – 12
- Asian or Asian British – Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Any other Asian background – 13
- Chinese or other ethnic group – Chinese – 2
- Black, African, Caribbean or Black British – African, Caribbean, Any other Black, African or Caribbean background – 80
- Other ethnic background – 12
The consultation questionnaire offered patients the opportunity to submit their comments on the proposed merger. Analysis of the comments associated with the 200 responses indicated that 59% (117) were explicitly supportive of the proposed merger, 12% (25) felt the merger was not a good idea and 29% had a neutral comment such as “N/A” or “No comment”.
Further analysis was carried out into the 25 responses that stated that they were unsupportive of the changes, the core themes were that these patients were concerned that continuity of care would be impacted and that they wouldn’t not be able to see their regular GP or they felt that the merger would lead to staffing cuts. In fact, one of the key incentives for the proposed merger is to attract additional clinical staff to the merged organisation. Patients will still be able to see the GPs whom they are familiar with.
The two practices already have the same teams within the back-office administration function. In summary, we are reassured that the majority of our patients are supportive of the proposal in this document. Patients appreciate that the current model places an unnecessary burden on the administrative teams and merged contracts will deliver the positive changes outlined in our proposal.