Updated 20 March 2024
Hawthorn Drive Surgery is an NHS GP practice which provides primary care services to patients in Ipswich. We carried out an announced assessment of one quality statement, equity of access, under the key question on 28 March 2024. We carried out the assessment as part of our work to understand how practices are working to try to meet peoples demands for access and to better understand the experiences of people who use services and providers. We recognise the work that GP practices have been engaged in to continue to provide safe, quality care to the people they serve. We know staff are carrying this out whilst the demand for general practice remains exceptionally high, with more appointments being provided than ever. However, in this challenging context, access to general practice remains a concern for people. Our strategy makes a commitment to deliver regulation driven by people’s needs and experiences of care. The assessment of the quality statement equity of access includes looking at what practices are doing innovatively to improve patient access to primary care and sharing this information to drive improvement. We found that the Provider understood the challenges to patient access and used feedback and other information to monitor and improve access. Overall, the practice is rated as good and the key question responsive continues to be rated as providing a good service. The provider had an effective system to monitor access to appointments and telephone lines for the purpose of continuous improvement. We spoke to a representative of the practice Patient Participation Group (PPG) and they told us that the provider implemented improvements in response to feedback.