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General practitioner
Practice leaflets
The NHS puts patients at the centre of the way services are designed and delivered.
To empower patients and to give them greater choice over important aspects of their care means providing them with better information about local NHS services, particularly the services provided by local general practices.
Practice leaflets are an ideal way in which practices can tell local people about the local services on offer and how patients can access them.
Patient information and choice
The results of the recent national consultation exercise ‘Building on the Best – Choice Responsiveness and Equity in the NHS’, showed that patients and potential patients increasingly wish to make choices about how they can access the type of treatment they want to receive. Practice leaflets are an important means of supporting patients in making informed choices and decisions about their health care.
Improved information is a useful way of managing demand and practice leaflets can be used as a signpost for patients in navigating their way around the NHS to appropriate alternative NHS services. These include NHS Direct, local pharmacies, NHS walk-in centres, the local out-of-hours provider, and accident and emergency services. You can find details of these services at www.nhs.uk, or you can contact your PCT for a copy of Your Guide to Local Health Services.
Regulations
Regulations require all GMS and PMS practices to produce a practice leaflet. They also set out the core information that each leaflet must contain.
Practice leaflets: the communications context
Practice leaflets are an important part of a wider suite of national and local information tools for patients about health care. The table below shows how all these information tools fit together.
Practice Leaflets Table |
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National |
Local |
Your Guide to the NHS – static brochure available to patients via national response line and, where applicable, from their local PCT. Currently under review, the brochure covers what patients can expect from NHS services, the complaints procedure and their responsibilities as patients. |
Your Guide to Local Health Services – annual publication, produced by PCTs since 2003, according to national guidelines. It tells people about the services provided by their local PCT, how the PCT spends its money and how it performs against national targets. |
Get the Right Treatment Campaign – information for patients on the range of health care options available to them, which encourages the most appropriate use of services. Leaflets are available free of charge from the DH Publications Orderline on 08701 555455. |
PCT Guide to Primary Care Services – this will replace the Local Directory of Family Doctors and is an overview guide to local primary care services, including details of each GP practice in the area. It will be available on the internet. |
NHS Choices www.nhs.uk – gives patients and the public information about the NHS locally and nationally and includes an overview of how the NHS works. The site holds information on each local family practice, pharmacy, optician and dentist surgery as well as NHS organisations. Each PCT already has a web editor whose role is to input information about all services provided in their region. |
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Individual practice leaflet – these give patients and would-be patients information on the services offered by a particular practice. |
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Last updated: 04/06/10
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