Patient Registration & ID Report 2016
Summary
We heard from different patients who were experiencing conflicting messages from GP surgeries in terms of registering and if you need identification to do so.
"I am currently a patient registered with Clifton Court Medical Practice and I
have decided that I am unhappy with this surgery and would like to register
with Orchard Court Surgery.
I rang Orchard Court Surgery to enquire about registering and I was told I
could not register as I do not live in their catchment area. Is this correct as I
was under the impression that if you are a resident of Darlington that you can
register with any GP surgery in the Darlington area.
Please could someone let me know?
Findings
Service users identified the following key themes:
- Individuals are unable to register at a GP practice of their choice due to practice boundary rules. Some patients want to register with a practice outside of their boundary area due to work commitments or personal issues.
- Individuals were being told they had to change GP surgeries despite being registered with their practice for a number of years.
- Patients are being told they can not register unless they have idenitification. However, this can cause problems for vulnerable patients who can't afford to pay for photographic I.D.
Each GP surgery provided us with their own procedures for registration and identification. We found that this was inconsistent across the 11 GP surgeries within Darlington.
Next Steps
Healthwatch Darlington presented these findings to Darlington Clinical Commissioning Group (DCCG), we then got the opportunity to discuss our findings with Paul Irving, Primary Care Commissioner.
We also gathered the local GP practices 'Patient Hand Books' so we could easily refer to their criteria to help alleviate patients who were concerned about registration quickly, if they contacted us directly.
We were told about the 'Out of area' scheme and how this might be helpful to those patients who required primary care outside of their working hours when GP surgeries may be closed.
We will continue to work collaboratively with the GP practices in Darlington so that
each and every individual patient is given the correct information at a time when
they need it the most.
Downloads
Please get in touch if you require this information in an alternative format or if you have any questions, we would love to hear from you.
