The Out-of-Hours Patient Questionnaire (OPQ)

CFEP has developed dedicated survey materials designed specifically to give patients seeking out-of-hours care a chance to feedback their experiences on the advice they have received.

The OPQ is designed to help Out-of-Hours care providers to improve care and services offered to patients. The questionnaire was developed following work undertaken with the Peninsular Medical School and the University of Manchester.

The OPQ is used by GP out-of-hours organisations to measure patient perceptions of the care that they received at night-time and at the weekends. There are three OPQ questionnaires which have important elements in common but which ask patients about their experiences of the following services: Telephone Advice, Treatment Centre, Home Visit. As a provider, this will allow you to evaluate the different types of care that you offer. You can survey for all three services, or just 2 or 1 of the services, depending on the feedback you seek. Part of the questionnaire is specifically about the consultation with the doctor, allowing your clinicians to receive specific feedback about their interpersonal skills. The questionnaire covers 4 sides of A4 paper.

We look after the entire survey process for you, whilst adhering to Data Protection Laws and Patient Protection Advice. We recommend that you survey 1% of calls per quarter. Patients should be surveyed no more than 6 weeks after their consultation. Send us a password-protected list of out-of-hours consultations and we will employ a confidential system for mailing questionnaires and reminders to patients. We analyse all patient responses whilst protecting patient anonymity.

A named manager at the Out-of-hours organisation will receive a confidential report which includes all patient comments, summary tables (with demographics) and graphs – which include benchmark scores derived from other out-of-hours organisations. If doctors receive individual results (which include benchmark scores from other doctors), this information can form an important part of the discussions undertaken during appraisal.

By calling or emailing CFEP. Each out-of-hours provider gets a specific service from us, but the cost typically does not exceed £2.80 per patient.