Improving Access to General Practice – 2025/26

All GP practices across NW London have been asked to develop plans during 2025/26 to improve access for patients. We have developed a plan which will be discussed with the surgery’s Patient Participation Group throughout the year. The main focus of the plan is:

• Improving consistency in answering the phone:
  • Answering 90% of inbound calls within 10 minutes. We currently achieve this some of the time, but not always between 8am and 9am each morning. Patients calling at this time can use the “call me back” option in the interactive menu
  • We are also searching for a solution which would enable callers to speak to an interactive AI voice tool in their native language
• In-house reception training and development programme:
  • We have appointed a manager into a full-time role to train and develop reception staff
  • We have also developed a set of 6 values, and associated behaviours, which we are rolling out to ensure all staff are focused on customer service, solving problems, and being compassionate
• Continuing to improve our existing long-term focus on making care for complex patients more proactive and joined up
  • We already coordinate care for complex patients through multi-disciplinary teams involving people at the surgery, as well as from other parts of the NHS and social care. This helps everyone involved in support to have a common view of what the patient needs and their preferences