Patients want to be able to access care when they need it and we understand that.

Last year (April 2025 to March 2026) we worked with other local GP practices in the Regent Health Primary Care Network (PCN) to create a plan that improved access for our local patients to GP practice services.

The plan was submitted to the local ICB (Integrated Care Board) and it was approved in June 2025. Our practice/s then worked through the year on implementing that plan to improve access.

To read/download the full access improvement plan from 2025/2026, click the button below.

Read the full Improvement plan here

In summary we agreed to:

• Answer 90% of calls answered within 10 minutes by March 2026

• 90% of e-consultations (Patchs) responded to by next working day by January 2026

• 2% of patient list flagged for continuity of care by December 2025 

• 10% increase in NHS App registrations by March 2026 

• One annual patient survey and one engagement events

• Throughout 2025/26 monthly clinical time audits and appointment mapping reviewsJune 2025 – Jan 2026 

Our approach to the agreed actions always considered our patient demographic, challenges and prevalences.

How did we do?

Collectively our PCN practices answered 93% calls within 10 minutes

Over 90% of e-consultations (Patchs) were responded to by the next working day

Our PCN identified 2,036 patients as benefitting from continuity of care (over 2%); practices then added an alert to this in the patient’s medical record. To ensure that this approach to continuity was effective an audit was carried out in Jan 2026 to review whether this cohort of patients were in fact receiving continuity of care. The PCN organised a learning event to discuss the audit, outcomes and learning, the event was attended by all practices. 

All practices within our network increased NHS app registrations to improve access for our patients. Our eight network practices had between 60% and 100% up take of NHS app registrations.

We carried out a patient survey and surpassed the target of a 4% return rate. Our network collected 2,839 responses; all practices within our network participated in the survey. This gave the PCN valuable feedback to inform their next steps in improving access for the local population.

The PCN also held three patient engagement events. We worked alongside the Mosiac Trust to gather deeper insights into access on 26/11/2025. We also hosted two lunch and learn sessions alongside local Community Health and Wellbeing Workers at the Lilestone community hub. The lunch sessions were held on 16/10/25 and 6/11/25 and provided wider feedback on access. All patient engagement events on access were attended by patients across network practices.

The PCN carried out monthly audits over a seven month period with the focus being on the appropriate use of GP appointments. The PCN organised a learning event where the outcome of the audit was reviewed collectively by PCN practices and learning shared to improve patient care and experience.

The access approach in 26/27:

Our practice and PCN were able to draw useful insights from the work completed in 25/26 and we want to build on it.

1. We will continue to answer a minimum of 90% telephone calls within 10 minutes
2. We will carefully monitor appointments made available to our NHS111 colleagues and ensure there is adequate availability using our practice list size as a guide.
3. We will provide staff (NHS ambassadors) to help patients download and use the NHS app. To align with this we will continue to increase the number of patients at our practice registered with the NHS app.
4. Practices within the network with identify more patients that would benefit from continuity of care (minimum 3% of registered list size). We will also carry out an audit on a sample of this cohort of patients (20%) to see if the continuity approach above if effective.
5. We will continue to be transparent with our patients on the work we plan to do on access.
6. Our PCN will identify under-represented cohorts in the locality and with the assistance of a clinical and non-clinical champion hold four patient engagement events to improve access.
7. In 26/27 we will run another survey for patients and aim to achieve a return rate of 4% + we will aim to have a more even spread across practices and ensure all patient cohorts are represented. Our 25/26 survey told us that a large number of respondents are aware of digital solutions ‘but are not confident’; our 26/27 survey will aim to understand this more. A significant number of patients state they ‘don’t know how to use them’. We will build our new survey to collect more information to understand how we can overcome the lack of confidence.