Healthwatch Ealing General Engagement Group Report 2019

With growing pressure on the NHS – people living longer, more people living with long-term conditions, lifestyle choices affecting people’s health – changes are needed to make sure everybody gets the support they need. This includes making it easier to access support closer to home and via technology, doing more to help people stay well, and providing better support for people with long-term health conditions. 

Healthwatch Ealing decided to conduct one general focus group services in Ealing, which was held at the Welshore Community Hub, on Wednesday 15th May 2019.

This report outlines the feedback given to Healthwatch Ealing about general health services by local service users, including what works, what does not work, what can be improved, what matters most, and how people want to be engaged. This engagement work resulted in feedback about specific services in the borough and overarching themes, such as ‘GP to hospital communication’.

In this report, we take a more detailed look at the feedback emerging from discussions. When talking to service users they gave feedback on specific services and providers. They discussed what they thought were the problems with those services and what was working well. These issues have been highlighted in this section.

Summary of themes

• Restoring Ealing hospital: Participants agreed that they wanted services to come back into Ealing hospital, citing paediatrics and maternity as their main concerns. They acknowledged that certain things, such as physiotherapy, would be better placed as a community health service. A recurrent theme was the accessibility of services, or lack thereof.

• Admin & referrals: Participants complained that the entire administration of the system in reference to all GP and hospital communications, including referrals, was not efficient. Across the board, there were examples of miscommunication, withholding of records, data breaches, and untimeliness.

• Staff training & support: There were concerns that staff were not always trained adequately, or that non-clinical staff could be trained further in order to help out GPs and patients equally. People mentioned that staff, nurses particularly, need to be paid and supported properly in order to work effectively.

• Social isolation: It was highlighted that one of the biggest challenges people faced was overcoming social isolation and that combating this was an effective method in preventing ill-health. Participants agreed that the voluntary sector, and accessibility, played a key role and should be funded accordingly.

• Digitisation: Participants agreed that there was a role for the digital within the NHS but that this should not replace human contact. However, they did voice concerns about the recent data breaches and the lack of security within the NHS digital systems.