GP website health check-up
Many of us use our GP (General Practitioner) website to find out vital information such as how to make an appointment with the doctor or nurse and order prescriptions. Considering the current access issues many are facing when trying to get an appointment at their GP practice, increasing numbers of people are turning to their GP practice website to find information or to access services. It is therefore vital that GP websites are user-friendly, provide up to date information and are accessible for patients.
Considering this, Healthwatch North Yorkshire have carried out a health check on all 84 GP websites in North Yorkshire to explore how easy to use, up to date and accessible the websites are.
What did Healthwatch do?
Our volunteers acted as a patient or member of the public and navigated their way around the websites. We looked at a range of information and services that patients might want to access online, including:
- Contacting the surgery and making an appointment
- Registering as a new patient
- Ordering prescriptions
- Patient participation groups
- Website accessibility and usability
The findings
From the findings we have produced a report that provides an overall summary of the findings for all GP practice websites across North Yorkshire.
Read our health check of GP websites report
We have also produced short briefings for each of the 17 primary care networks that cover North Yorkshire (please click 'download' for each report you wish to read).
Read the short briefing(s) relating to your specific GP practice.
Primary care networks are formed by GP practices coming together to coordinate provision of care and services at scale above that which individual practices can deliver.
Within each PCN briefing you can also access the specific findings for each individual practice website.
GP practices are encouraged to follow NHS England’s guidance for creating a highly usable and accessible GP website for patients.
What did people tell us about GP websites?
In the report we share examples of good practice, where GP websites provide clear information and a range of choices to meet their patients' needs. However, we also found some significant issues on GP practice websites.
- Worryingly, only 20% of the websites had an accessibility icon, 70% had an accessibility page and 10% had no accessibility icon or accessibility page.
- Surgery information (such as opening times, contact information) was reported to be missing on 40% of website homepages.
- A large proportion of websites did not have a call-to-action button relating to sick notes or test results.
- In relation to whether instructions were clear about how to cancel or change an appointment, it was reported as not being clear for 62% of practice websites.
Examples of good practice
In relation to appointments, it was reported as being easy to find out how to make an appointment on 77% of the practice websites. It was clear for 82% of the practices that there are different ways to contact and see a doctor or healthcare professional.
In terms of information about what patients should do out of hours, it was reported as being clear for 82% of practice websites.
Many websites had a call-to-action button for appointments (85%), prescriptions (82%) and for registering with the practice (74%).
What action is being taken to improve GP websites?
Humber and North Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership are writing to each GP practice in North Yorkshire, sharing our findings about their individual website. We've highlighted areas where we think their website is good, as well as making suggested improvements.
The partnership comprises of NHS organisations, North Yorkshire Council, health and care providers and voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations.
As all GP practices are currently working on improvement plans, which includes improving usability and accessibility of their website, the findings from our exercise will support practices to make changes to improve their websites.
In April 2024 all the GP practices will report on the progress of how they have improved their websites and share this with Healthwatch North Yorkshire.
Responses so far to our report
- Hambleton North Primary Care Network has said they are planning to make the suggested improvements and then once they have made the improvements they will trial it out with their patient participation group (PPG) to see if they can demonstrate an improvement on patient experience from the feedback we provided (we have shared the question guidance our volunteers used so their PPG can re-do the exercise our volunteers did).
- Central Healthcare has said they are using our feedback to improve their website and asked for some examples of websites that have good accessibility features as this was something they needed to improve on.
- Esk Valley Medical Practice & Staithes Surgery said: “thank you for your report which was really interesting, in line with your recommendations, we have instructed our website provider to amend the Esk Valley Medical Practice & Staithes Surgery to reflect the following additional information
Esk Valley Medical Practice is adding seasonal advice flu/hay fever, their Care Quality Commission (CQC) rating, an accessibility icon and a link to the Healthwatch North Yorkshire website so that people can feedback on their services.
Staithes Surgery is adding seasonal advice flu/hay fever, a link to Healthwatch North Yorkshire's website, instructions on how to cancel appointments, a link to the NHS app, an accessibility icon and patient participation group information.
