Services
322,000+
Registered patients across Southwark
38
Practices to benefit from improved access
NHS Southwark Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is working with GP practices across Southwark to focus on improving access for local patients, ensuring the best use of general practice workforce and resources. With no current definitive systematic approach to measuring capacity and patient needs within primary care, Southwark CCG identified an opportunity for exploring a modelling tool to support the borough's 38 practices, beginning with a five-day design sprint.
Dawn Turner | User Researcher, Unboxed
“With a growing demand on primary care resources across the borough, Southwark CCG is taking a proactive approach to identifying the opportunities in how to make the best use of resources, supporting both patients and general practices.”
Focusing on one specific audience of patient access, the sprint goal for the week was set: "A digital tool to help practice managers make informed decisions about using resources more efficiently to improve access for patients". Initial focus on subject expert interviews, user journeys and pain point mapping began identifying early opportunities across data visualisation and communication to take forward.
Martyn Evans | Head of Product | Unboxed
“Some of the biggest opportunities that we've been able to uncover are addressing how data can be used to present actionable insights for practice managers and how practices can then use this data, alongside wider system data, to enable more informed decisions around primary care access.”
Co-locating directly in Southwark provided quick and easy access to subject matter experts for user interviews, including Healthwatch, the GP Federation and the Local Medical Committee. Ideation sketching sessions teamed with ongoing expert user interviewing allowed for emerging ideas and concepts to be quickly validated, heading into the prototype storyboarding and concept build phase.
5
Day design sprint
7
Prototype user testing sessions carried out
User testing during the final sprint day provided the team with feedback of a prototype practice manager data visualisation dashboard, sharing 'up-to-date' information about how access is used at both practice and locality levels. Next steps include further exploration into systems and data, along with ongoing user testing and iteration. Southwark CCG is now introducing user-led approaches to improving access for 322,000+ residents.
Dr Emily Gibbs | Clinical Lead | Southwark CCG
“Through this design sprint, the Unboxed team has helped us to identify and quickly explore some of the core opportunities of our General Practice Access Tool, resulting in a number of recommendations, including a practice manager dashboard. We've taken our first steps into taking a more patient-centred approach to our goal of improving patient access to primary care across Southwark."