Nine in ten GP patient responses to the restarted ‘friends and family test’ (FFT) were positive in August, an increase of three percentage points on the prior month.
The latest NHS England data, published last week, showed that 1,601 GP practices submitted a total of 172,807 patient responses for August 2022.
The FFT is an anonymous survey asking people if they would recommend the services they have used, letting GP practices know if patients are satisfied with the service provided, as well as where improvements are needed.
Nine in ten (90%) GP patients gave a positive response to the test in August – up from 87% in July – while the percentage of negative responses decreased from 6% to 5% between the two months.
NHS England had suspended the FFT for practices in March 2020 to free up GPs for the Covid-19 effort, but practices were told to resume collecting the data from 1 April 2022.
In 2017, some GPs pushed for the BMA to lobby to scrap the test as it gave no attention to the ‘dire challenges facing general practice’.
And when it was first announced in 2013, the test was criticised by healthcare experts for asking the wrong question.
But in 2019, NHS England said it was changing the test’s key question to make it clearer and more accessible.
READERS' COMMENTS [1]
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The fact that the NHS takes this data seriously or thinks it is remotely credible, is a sickness in itself. How about an FFT on the NHS system itself. The managers and leaders, the scapegoating nature of “it” – allowing the consumer to vent off at the gatekeeper, when the gate is shut. The NHS is a master at dodging and bluffing where the problem lies, behind Zoom meeting screens and bullet points.