NHS Choices is an online health information service, designed to meet the huge public demand for reliable and authoritative health information. It’s important that the information on your GP practice is up to date. This explains how to do it.
Over 7 million people visit NHS Choices every month. It is quickly being recognised as the primary online source of health information for the public.
People are looking for:
One of the most visited parts of the site is the service directory. This includes a detailed profile of every GP practice in England, with information on opening hours, clinics, staff, how to register or make an appointment, and contact details.
You need to keep your details as up to date and accurate as possible. GP Practice Profiles are designed to complement a practice’s own website (if you have one) and include a link so users can go straight to your site.
Your profile gives you an opportunity to engage with your patients. You can include videos, newsletters and pictures of staff and premises.
To get the most out of this resource you need to register for a username and password. To register, call the NHS Choices service desk on 0845 4023089 or email thechoicesteam@nhschoices.nhs.uk
If you have an NHS email address, NHS Choices will email you the practice’s username and password. If you don’t have an NHS email account, you will receive a new username and password by post. This is necessary for security.
To help you to start changing your profile information, NHS Choices has created a Practice Based Editing (PBE) Guide. This includes examples of good profiles and offers some ideas of how you can make the best of the space.
Soon the public will have the opportunity to give feedback on their experience of their GP and put this on NHS Choices (this starts in autumn 2009).
This will not be a mechanism to ‘rate your GP’. Comments will be restricted to a patient’s experience of their practice (opening times, out-of-hours service, ease of making an appointment, disabled access and so on). Comments on individual GPs will not be published.
A careful pre-moderation policy will be in place to prevent offensive or potentially defamatory comments going on the site. Practices will have the right to reply online to all comments and this is highly recommended.
Further details of the patient feedback mechanism will be made available to GPs shortly.
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