Friends & Family Test Results – March 2024

• “Willow practice have lovely caring and understanding doctors that take time with you and listen to you.”
• “When I rang for an appointment I was able to be seen virtually straight away. Very good.”
• “Attentive and friendly service.”
• “Willow Practice is a fabulous Dr’s. From reception staff to Dr/nurse. I am so lucky to be a patient at Willow Practice”
• “I love my willow practice. They are very friendly and support me very much. Thank you NHS”
• “I have been able to see my regular doctor, and the reception service booking me in were very efficient & helpful.”
• “Doctors, nurses, GP managers and reception always very good and kind welcoming people and helpful, please keep it up going like that it’s one of best GP around Hounslow, Thanks for everyone and everything”
• “You always listen carefully. It’s a great practice”
• “Always very helpful staff, clinical and Admin alike. Easy to get an appointment too.”
• “The response was quick in having a appointment and the lady on the phone had a lovely attitude”
• “Appointment arranged at a convenient time. Receptionist friendly and helpful. Very short waiting time”
• “Excellent, can’t say more than that.”
• “Able to make an appointment online or by phone that usually suits me. Like getting results or follow ups by text message and where needed the option to respond. Happy with the service I receive overall.”
• “Have always had very positive experiences when dealing with the practice regardless of who I have communicated with.”
• “We have always received pleasant, caring and fast treatment at Willow Practice. Communications are efficient. Full marks to nurses, doctors and reception staff at the best practice we have attended.”

Thank you to all of the patients who supplied such positive responses! It really does help the team, as a whole to continue to strive to provide the very best service to our patients.

• “Too long for appointments and too long when you need forms filling out!”
  
  Willow Response: Unfortunately, your two concerns are mutually conflicting. With a finite amount of GP time, in order to reduce the waiting time for forms completion, we would have to allocate time from GP clinics and which would entail longer wait for routine appointments and vice versa.
• We would prefer for no patient to have to wait for a routine appointment with their GP, but in reality all GP practices have to book in incoming weeks. We hope that it reassures you that in relation to GP consultations, Willow Practice have never (at the very least within the last 3 years) exceeded NHS England’s suggested target 2 weeks. If a patient prefers to see a particular clinician, e.g. who has been with the practice for many years, this may incur a longer wait due to such demand, but all patients are able to see a suitably qualified clinician within this timeframe. We also balance this by allocating a certain amount of each clinicians’ daily rotas to allow patients to have urgent, “Same Day” consultations within the morning or afternoon that they request it. Please note however that we are unable to accommodate requests for a particular clinician when providing urgent assistance.
• In regards to forms completion, these are done as private work and therefore not able to be done during our NHS contracted hours.

• “Making an appointment is very difficult takes 3 weeks or more time. Too long to book an appointment, reception too busy need to have better understanding of patience needs.“
  
  Willow Response: Please see above response in regards to waiting time for a routine appointment. Regarding Reception workload, we do offer online booking for GP appointments, our online consultation tool Patchs is available via our website and we do suggest that patients email [email protected] for any other administrative requests for assistance. If patients use these options, this should relieve the pressure on the phone lines and the Reception to allow them more time to assist patients who are unable to use the other suggested access methods.
• “e-consult forms now only able to use for half hour at 8-8.30 as practice closes them, apparently because they don’t have more appointments left that day”
• Willow Response: Please could you kindly confirm that this response is in regards to Willow Practice? We have not used e-Consult for over a year, but use Patchs now. Also we have a generous daily allocation of clinical and unlimited non-clinical availability which has never been exceeded since it was activated.
• “Well to actually get an appointment for a doctor you have to get past receptionist who want to know problem I don’t want to talk to someone I don’t know about my problem just doctor.”
  
  Willow Response: Although we understand patients’ desire for confidentiality, we do ask the reception team to request information to allow them, as trained Care Navigators to forward any patient requests to the most appropriate clinician. It also allows the clinician to prioritise based upon their clinical judgement and to prepare for and to use the appointment time most efficiently.
• “I don’t want to do everything online and it seems you as a practice are pushing patients to do this more than ever being able to talk to a human being seems to be something of the past!!”
  
  Willow Response: The NHS as a whole is in the process of becoming more digitalised, not just Willow Practice. If patients are able to request repeat medication, submit any requests or book appointments online, via Patchs on our website or via email, it helps to free up the phone lines for those patients who are not able to. It can also protect against any human error.