During March we supported Gateshead Cares in the development of their new health and care plan. We had feedback from people in Gateshead and amongst other things we found out…
What they thought the NHS has been doing well over the last couple of years.
The top five things were:
- The continuation of high quality services during the pandemic
- Secondary care services
- Getting appointments quickly
- Staff attitudes
- GP services
“During the pandemic, despite the burden on services, my personal needs have been looked after.”
They told us what they thought the NHS could be doing differently and the top five were:
- Having better access to face-to-face GP appointments
- Increasing the number of GP appointments
- Reducing waiting times
- Making it easier to access a GP/removing triage processes
- Improving communications between the NHS and patients and also within the NHS
“GP telephone appointments have been a complete failure. For most ailments that you require a GP they need to inspect it face-to-face. Complete waste of theirs and our time having to go through the whole thing on the phone before going in for a consultation anyway.”
We asked what Gateshead’s health and social care priorities should be for the next year and the top five were:
- Mental health support
- Staff recruitment/retention
- Children & Young People Services
- Reducing waiting lists
- Improvements for ageing population/care of the elderly
What happened next?
The feedback has been used to help inform Gateshead’s new Health and Care Plan which is due to be published XXXX.
