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Out-Of-Hours Services
4 Recommendations
The survey findings show that the out-of-hours
GPs services in the EHSSB area provide, in general, a well-targeted,
effective service which also produces a high level of patient
satisfaction. However, the Eastern Health and Social Services
Council have made a number of recommendations which the
out-of-hours services may want to consider, in order to
improve their services.
| 1 |
When asking patients,
particularly older people, to come to out-of-hours centres,
GPs should ask whether they have access to transport.
Also, because many older people ask for a home visit
because they do not have a car to get them to the centres,
GPs should encourage patients to look at other methods
of transport where the GPs consider a home visit to
be unnecessary. |
| 2 |
Although it is important
to encourage patients to come to the out-of-hours centres
or get phone advice where this is possible, GPs (particularly
from the BELDOC service) should remember that some patients,
particularly older people, feel under a lot of pressure
to come to the centres, and yet have transport problems
which make this difficult. |
| 3 |
GPs also need to be aware
of other difficulties which patients may have in travelling
to centres, particularly childcare or caring responsibilities.
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| 4 |
Although only a small
number of patients and parents (7% to 12%) contacted
the centres because they expected the out-of-hours services
to be readily available, GPs may want to consider using
phone calls and information leaflets to make patients
and parents aware that they should use this service
for urgent medical treatment only and the inappropriateness
of contacting the services in non-urgent cases. |
| 5 |
The Contactors Bureau
may want to look at how long it takes GPs to arrive
at patients' homes for home visits, as many patients
and parents were not satisfied with this part of their
service. |
| 6 |
SEBDOC may want to look
at the reasons why many patients and parents of children
visited at home were not satisfied with the treatment
they received, and - consider ways of improving this
level of satisfaction. |
| 7 |
GPs from the out-of-hours
services who carry out home visits should always introduce
themselves to the patients or parents and show them
some form of identification. |
| 8 |
When other organisations
carry out surveys of out-of-hours services in the future,
they should try to-improve upon the response rate we
received in this survey (38%). |
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