Soho Square

General Practice

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 the West End and Marylebone Primary Care Network) 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 reviews June 2025 – Jan 2026

Our approach to the agreed actions always considered our patient demographic, challenges and prevalence.

How did we do?

• Collectively our PCN practices answered 97 % calls within 10 minutes
• Over 90% of e-consultations (Patchs) were responded to by the next working day
• Our PCN identified 1104 patients as benefitting from continuity of care (over 2%) and this being appropriately flagged in their 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. 
• 69% of patients locally had downloaded the NHS app by March 2026
• The PCN received 2041 responses to the patient engagement survey (over 4% of population). This gave the PCN valuable feedback to inform their next steps in improving access for the local population. The PCN also held two engagements events ‘Coffee with a Copper’ event at Pheonix Garden and a more targeted event with the Chinese Welfare Trust at Charing Cross Library.

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 access approach – April 2026 to March 2027:

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 so that we can continuously improve our services in line with access demands. In WEM PCN we were able to see patients under 25 years were the least represented cohort of patients and so we will design our survey and approach with this in mind. Patients in the PCN are generally using digital tools to assist access but the vast majority said they were ‘using but not confident’. We plan to explore this with our patients in 26/27 to understand what the challenges to building confidence are and how we can address them.
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 events to improve access.