18 October 2023

“Warmth” and “community” make top Derbyshire practice among the best in the Midlands

A Derbyshire GP practice that achieved some of the highest patient satisfaction scores in the whole of the Midlands region has been congratulated by NHS leaders.

Hartington Surgery, in the Peak District, scored 97% positive patient satisfaction in the recent annual patient survey.

This places it in top spot among Derbyshire’s 113 GP practices and among the top 10 in the NHS England Midlands region.

Dr Vijay Rawal, NHS England Regional Medical Director for Primary Care said: “Congratulations to Hartington Surgery. The whole team obviously have patients at the very heart of all that they do. Everyone should be very proud of the work they are achieving on their patients’ behalf.”

NHS Derby and Derbyshire’s chief executive Chris Clayton added: “This is a tremendous achievement in such challenging times and testament to the hard work of the whole team. Thank you very much for all your hard work and congratulations!”

The practice has been led by single-hander GP Dr Ash Dawson since 2018 and he is supported by practice manager Julie Coles, who has been in post for 22 years.

Ash says: “I think it’s because we have such a good relationship with the local community.

“Many of the team are from the local community and they are very dedicated. They know everyone. I think there’s a certain warmth about the place that is hard to bottle and there are some unique factors.

“We are the most rural of Derbyshire’s practices and there are strong family support structures among farming families, which increases resilience in managing the health of older people, for example.

“The ratio of patient numbers to healthcare professionals we have is about ideal and we can flex quickly and be dynamic if demand increases.

“The fact that we have a dispensary is really helpful for local people.

“We have a very good patient participation group and our local community supports us, for example by running a volunteer medication delivery service and distributing information for us.

“We also run services such as a 24 hour ECG service, which means people don’t have to take long journeys to a hospital.”

Julie added: “We work hand in hand with our patients. We live here and we really care about local people. We provide continuity of care because many of the staff have been here a long time. We notice if something is not quite right and we can do something about it.

“We make sure that people receive their annual medication reviews and people respond to us positively when we ask them to come and see us.

“We have really good access – people don’t have to wait a long time – and that helps too.”

The wider practice team includes sessional GP Dr Sandra Ives; advanced nurse practitioners Jill Chapman and Debbie Peach; midwife Jennie Dawson; health care assistants Laura Thompson; GP assistant Charlii Cooper; practice nurse Debbie Watson; dispensing team Kay Bennett, Carole Hunter, Kate Poole and Kerry Allsopp; and reception team leader Jayne Wilton and her team Lindsay MacLean, Rachel Moorcroft, Jeanne Baker, Nicky Rogers and Emily Riley.

The other “top ten” practices in Derby and Derbyshire for patient satisfaction were: