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 South Westminster 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.

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 98 % calls within 10 minutes

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

Our PCN identified 1383 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.

There are four GP practices in our network and all but one has a minimum off 66% patients registered with the NHS app the highest registration rate in the network is 75%. The Doctor Hickey’s Practice for the homeless serves a population that has less access to digital means and this understandably effects the rate of NHS app registrations.

SWPCN ran two patient engagement events in 25/26 that were well attended and informative. A free health and wellbeing event was ran on 26/02/2026 at Tachbrook youth and social club. Twenty five patients attended the event that was hosted alongside South Westminster Community Champions. The Community Champions coffee morning was held on 12/11/25 in Churchill gardens youth club alongside community health and wellbeing workers.

The PCN received 990 responses to the patient engagement survey; this represents 2.8% of the population. While the PCN did not achieve the original target of 4% the responses received provided a valuable insight into patient’s views on access and this helps us shape our approach in 26/27

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.  

The improving 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. In 26/27 we will run a patient survey and aim to achieve the target of 4%. Collectively our practices will review the challenges that prevented reaching the return rate of 4% and plan to overcome them. We know that cost pressures on practices on sending SMS messages impacted return rate and so we will explore alternative approaches to reaching our patients and hearing their views. Our 25/26 survey informed that 11% of our patients had no understanding of digital tools that aide access, this will be addressed in our 26/27 survey.
7. 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