Date Published:
27 November 2006 |
BMA says Patient Experience Survey is discredited
GP practices regularly consult their patients about the services they provide
as part of the Quality and Outcomes Framework of the new GP contract, but the
BMA’s General Practitioners Committee (GPC) believes the new Patient
Experience Survey announced today is discredited because of
the government’s insistence on adding biased questions to the original
survey.
Dr Hamish Meldrum, chairman of the BMA’s GPC, said:
“ We reluctantly
consented to having some part of practice income dependent on a patient questionnaire
about access provided it was based on fair, unbiased questions which we agreed.
Progress towards such an agreement was made until the government imposed additional
questions in the survey which were not agreed.
_ The GPC believes the imposition of these
questions will raise patient expectations unfairly. The questions ask patients
if they are satisfied with
arrangements for early morning, evening and weekend surgeries at a time when
the government is not prepared to provide GP practices with the resources to
open at these times, all of which are outside GPs’ agreed contractual
hours. Although the imposed questions will not directly affect practice income,
we feel they have the potential to bias responses to all the other questions
which will.
_ This Patient Experience Survey is in our
view totally discredited by the addition of these questions. GPs will continue
to
consult their patients
about their views on the services they provide because we value their opinions
and want to try to arrange our surgeries to meet their needs. But using a survey
containing leading questions, putting words in patients’ mouths, and
falsely raising expectations, is not the way to do it. ”
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