Enter and View visit from Healthwatch Lancashire

We have recently had an Enter and View visit from Healthwatch Lancashire

The purpose of an Enter and View visit is for them to collect evidence of what works well and what could be improved to make people’s experiences better within our practice. Healthwatch can use this evidence to make recommendations to us and inform changes both for individual services as well as system-wide.

Irwell Medical Practice's report

On Wednesday 28th August 2024, Healthwatch Lancashire conducted an Enter & View visit at Irwell Medical Centre and spoke with patients and staff.

We made the following recommendations:

Investigate adding additional information to the appointment page on the website to explain appointment making options to patients.

• Action from provider: We will discuss this with our website provider and update the information on the webpage and our Facebook page to make this clearer to patients.
• Timeframe: Actioned by 29th November (it can sometimes take a while for the website to be updated so I have allowed extra time for this).

Celebrate successes and good practice highlighted within this report by sharing online, through the PPG group and in staff meetings

• Action from provider: We will share this report with all staff at the Practice and directly with our PPG. We will also add it to our website and our Facebook page for patients to have access to and read.
• Timeframe: Actioned by 31st October.

Inform patients about staff roles as part of the appointment making process so patients are better informed about how they can help with their enquiry.

• Action from provider: We have recently recruited three new care coordinators and three new admin team members and have enquired to book them onto Care Navigation training. We have also added this to our next Reception + Admin Team meeting in November to discuss with the team and highlight how we can improve communication with patients and explain what each role can do effectively when booking the appointment. We can also share this information with patients via our website and Facebook pages.
• Timeframe: Actioned by 22nd November.

Continue to promote membership of the PPG group by sending advertising materials to local community groups

• Action from provider: We have scheduled bi-monthly Facebook posts re our PPG and how to join, hoping this will raise regular awareness of our PPG and how to join. Our PPG also recently carried out a hearing loss awareness drop-in session at the Practice on the 9th + 10th October, this session promoted the PPG. The PPG will also be attendance at our Flu/Covid Clinics this winter.
• Timeframe: Throughout Oct, Nov + Dec.

Hold a monthly Admin drop in stall for administrative enquiries for patients

• Action from provider: This will be discussed with our Admin Team at their next meeting on the 11th November and we will discuss how we can make this happen as we think it is a great idea and will benefit patients.
• Timeframe: To be discussed on the 11th November + hopefully put into place from January 2025.

Investigate making enquiry desks more accessible by lowering a section of the desks at the reception areas and the pharmacy desk.

• Action from provider: Since your visit we have consistently tried to resolve this issue with the building owners unfortunately, they have not found a solution yet. However, as a Practice we have decided to move the Prescription Team + facilities to another reception area on the second floor of the Practice. This new area has lower desks for patients and more room for the Prescription Team to work effectively. This will be a big move and change for the Practice and our patients so we will need to plan for this properly. We will advertise this move to patients for a couple of weeks initially and then decide on a move date.
• Timeframe: We are aiming for this move to carried out by the end of January 2025 if not before.

Revisit

In order to continue our partnership with the team at Irwell Medical Centre and to measure the impact of our previous visit, Healthwatch Lancashire authorised representatives have maintained links with the practice throughout 2025 by supporting at events and engagements. A planned revisit was carried out on Wednesday 18th March 2026 by Steve who led the initial visit.

On arrival Healthwatch representatives spoke with the manager and went through the recommendations from last time and spoke about the impact they’ve had on the centre, staff and people using the service. We discussed some of the changes that have been made to the service on the back of our recommendations and initial findings.

One area of the previous visit’s recommendations was to increase the amount of information that is available for patients to access regarding the appointment making options. Since 2024, there has been an increase of patients making use of online methods to book appointments such as the NHS app.

One patient commented that they felt the process of making an appointment had improved and they had a better understanding of the triage process, having used it on multiple occasions.

It was mentioned that, due to the higher take-up of patients using the app, there has been a reduction in the number of telephone enquiries to book appointments. Staff commented that this had reduced the demands on their time to enable them to be more responsive to other enquiries. They also described how they have also had additional training to manage prescription requests and a dedicated prescription line is now available between the hours of 10:00am and 12:00pm.

In the previous report, we made a recommendation to improve the accessibility of the reception desks for patients with mobility considerations and to make sure that any queries could be dealt with in a confidential manner. The Prescriptions desk has now been moved from the side of the main reception area to the second floor as a dedicated space for patients to access support and make enquiries about their medications.

When we spoke with patients about the changes to the prescription service, patients felt that the process for making prescription enquiries was more effective. It was noted that there were information boards on the process around the practice and on the screens to explain the changes in the service to patients that explained when they could the prescription line or attend the practice to enquire about their medications.

In the previous visit, we recommended that the surgery display more information about the roles of staff members to keep patients informed about how they could help them. There has been a board added to the side of the reception desk that informs patients what staff are working on the day, their role and staff explained any delays and the reasons why to patients.

General observations

Staff were observed to be kind and courteous throughout the visit and helped representatives with questions. We spoke with 6 patients during the visit who complimented the level of care they received from staff.

One patient felt that there were still some improvements that they wanted to see in relation to keeping patients informed about waiting times to be seen at the practice, but they advised that they were kept informed about delays on the day by the team on the reception desk.

Concluding thoughts

Overall, the revisit to Irwell Medical centre was a great opportunity to learn more about the services delivered and to measure the impact our recommendations have when working in partnership with service providers. Irwell Medical centre staff have advised that they are working towards improving services with some initiatives in place to help meet the needs of their patients. Healthwatch Lancashire is grateful for the opportunity to revisit the Irwell Medical Centre, and we look forward to our next collaboration.

Published: May 7, 2026