We asked the public across Hampshire to tell us what matters most to them around health and social care issues as we come out of the pandemic. We ran a survey and more than 320 people shared their views with us.
This report highlights the key issues which Hampshire residents are concerned about when it comes to health and social care.
We asked which services people thought Healthwatch Hampshire should be focussing on in the coming year and the results were:
29% said mental health services
25% said GP services
9% said care for older people
As a result, we are now running additional projects to find out more about the issues and to discover exactly which mental health services people are concerned about and what the issues are around GP services in more details, so we can then look at what we can to help.
Positive ratings for health and social care services
We asked people across Hampshire to rate services either positively or negatively according to your experiences of them, and to tell us about those experiences over the past 12 months.
The services which had the most reviews, and also the most positive reviews were:
GP services (268 ratings) - 67% of people who had used GP services rated them “Excellent/Good
COVID -19 vaccinations (239 ratings) - 96% of people rated their experience of the COVID-19 vaccination as “Excellent/Good”
Blood tests (170 ratings) - 88% of people who had a blood test rated the service “Excellent/Good”
“I find that my GP is always on the end of the phone and will listen, he understands my health issues and manages them well.”
Concerns raised around mental health services
Hampshire residents raised concerns around Children and Young Peoples' Mental Health Services: Two thirds of the responses said the service was “Poor” (8 out of the 12 responses).
Only 1 person rated the service “Good/Excellent”.
For Adults Mental Health Services: 42% of people rated the service “Poor” (18 out of the 43 responses).
Some of the key themes were:
Long waiting times for treatment (particularly with CAMHS)
Poor communication with patients and their families
During the pandemic as face-to-face services stopped, some people felt that their treatment was effectively put on hold.
A general feeling that mental health services (again particularly CAMHS) is under resourced and cannot keep up with demand.
Key concerns raised around the future of GP access led to some negative ratings:
GP practices received the largest number of “Poor” responses, due to the high number of reviews these accounted for 13% of their total responses. In the open question about negative experiences 74 responses related to GP services. An examination of these entries show that most issues centred on patient access:
Difficulties getting through on the telephone
Difficulties getting appointments
Concerns about the move to remote appointments
Telephone appointments - Issues were raised around privacy, convenience, and the appropriateness of their use in certain circumstances.
A lack of access to face-to-face appointments when needed.
Patients really missed face-to-face contact with their GPs. There is concern that post-COVID-19 there will be resistance to returning to in person appointments.
We also asked people across Hampshire how easy or difficult it has been to get help from health or social care services in the last 12 months and the results were split down the middle.
55% of people said they found it ‘Very Easy/Easy’ to access services over the last year
45% of people found it ‘Very Difficult/Difficult’ to access services over the last year
What happens next?
As a result of what people have told us, Healthwatch Hampshire will now be undertaking further pieces of work around mental health, GP access and other areas raised in the report, to help ensure these issues are listened to and addressed.
We will be sharing this report widely with all key stakeholders in the County to make sure the voices of everyone who took part are heard.