NHS England have been criticised for a botched public consultation on Soho Square General Practice (above) and Milne House in Paddington. Click here to read more.
Please see the NHS E update on their engagement below (Dec 2014):

Soho Square
There has been substantial engagement with Soho Patients regarding the practice including a public meeting, 2 drop in sessions, just under 1000 received feedback submissions and Healthwatch feedback. The main and recurring themes to emerge from this engagement are as follows:

1. Patients consider it is important to retain the existing GPs working at the practice. The patient feedback received by NHSE indicated that 359 respondents were keen to retain the services of Dr Cheung and Dr Brassey at the practice. This theme was reiterated in the Healthwatch feedback which indicated the GPs “are highly trusted and their language skills and sensitivity/knowledge of the large local LGBT community/ BME Communities” are highly valued. A number of patient comments received by both NHSE and Healthwatch engagement reiterated the importance of the 2 GPs to the practice.
2. The location of the practice is important to patients. The patient feedback received by NHSE indicated that 133 respondents were keen to retain the practice at its current location with a further 53 indicating they want to keep practice close to where they live. A number of patient comments received by both NHSE and Healthwatch engagement reiterated the importance of the current location of practice.
3. Needs of the Chinese Community. The patient feedback received by NHSE indicated that 90 respondents were keen for Chinese language needs to be catered for within the service. Beyond the specific language needs there was extensive additional feedback about the need to reflect the cultural and community aspects of Chinese patients in the service delivery as reflected in the following comment received from Healthwatch engagement:
“We are from a Chinese community and have been with the doctor for over 40 years. The service of having a Chinese doctor and someone that can understand our needs has been invaluable……. A lot of Chinese patients feel comfortable with Chinese doctor that can understand their needs. Our livelihood is dependent on service.”

4. Access to Services – patients also highlighted the need to be able to access services. This issue is reflected in the Healthwatch feedback which raised concerns that “patients are losing access to their primary care source at a time when the local Clinical Commissioning Group are investing in encouraging patients to access correct pathways and avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and urgent care usage. “

Cassidy Medical
Cassidy has not had the extensive engagement that has been recently undertaken at Soho and therefore a letter has recently been sent to patients registered at the practice and drop in sessions have additionally been organised for patients at the practice next Wednesday 10^th December. As happened previously with Soho Square patients will additionally be able to provide feedback via the web and survey forms.

Next steps:
Feedback from patient engagement will be checked against the specification to ensure that the specification is fit for purpose, and any themes arising from the feedback are included in the MOI for bidders to take into account when planning their responses to the ITT questions. Bidders will only be in a position to score highly if they relate their ITT responses, reflecting their service delivery plans, to the needs of the population which they will be serving, including the themes raised directly by patients. Finally, NHS E will also have patient evaluators on the ITT evaluation panel - although these will not be patients registered at the practices involved due to the conflict of interest that this would create.