The West Yorkshire ‘It’s a GP Practice Thing’ campaign aims to increase awareness of how GP practices are working, the range of services offered and the specialist team members who are available to help people get the care they need.
The campaign development was led by Bradford District and Craven in October and November 2022 by working with local patient groups and primary care staff to co-create the most effective messages, design style, community language versions and marketing channels.
The campaign aims to cut through and stand out to encourage behaviour change and promote better understanding of primary care against the backdrop of a challenging context for both practices and patients.
Patient and community groups and primary care colleagues spoken to, identified that the campaign needed to:
- Show the different ways in which GP practices can be contacted including booking and managing appointments online
- Reinforce the expertise of GP practice staff and raise awareness of some of the common medical problems that they’re trained to deal with
- Increase the understanding that the range of skilled healthcare professionals means people don’t always need to see a doctor
- Remove the mysticism around how triaging works
- Show real routes to care that meant people avoided taking time away from work or children out of school
- Address the audience in an empathetic tone
Accessing care
We want to assure patients in Leeds that General Practice staff are working hard to make sure patients get the care they need.
Currently, there is on average 19,058 appointments taking place each day across 90 GP practices in Leeds. This is an increase of 696 appointments per day in comparison to 2021–22. Most of these appointments are face-to-face (75%), with 50% of appointments scheduled with a GP, and 42% of appointments take place on the same day. 84% of appointments are booked within two weeks.
On average there are over 38,000 total calls per day into practices which rises to 55,000 on a Monday. The role of care navigators (GP practice receptionists) is important to make sure that patients can get the help they need from the right person in the practice.
For more information about the campaign, please visit the West Yorkshire Health and Care Partnership website.