FAQ

We are able to change certain elements of your survey and add additional items.

Please let us know as soon as possible on 0131 337 6535 or email us at enquiries@intimedata.com to discuss changing your order.

Yes, multi-language formats of GPAQ Version 2 are available on request and will be subject to an additional charge.

GPAQ Version 3 will be made available in a variety of languages if there is the demand.

Please contact us on 0131 337 6535 or email us at enquiries@intimedata.com to find out about our multi-language formats.

Yes, we can provide you with a certificate but please note that this will be subject to an additional charge.

Please contact us on 0131 337 6535 or email us at enquiries@intimedata.com to find out about our certificates. 

We currently accept payment by cheque or BACS.

If you have any questions regarding payment please do not hesitate to contact us on 0131 337 6535 or email us at enquiries@intimedata.com

Please make sure you send them Recorded Delivery so that you can track them if we don't receive them (or send them by courier). We keep our own records of what is received, but we can't be responsible for them not arriving at our office in the first place.

Above all, please remember to send them to High Wycombe as there will be a surcharge if you send them to Edinburgh where we don't actually process the original questionnaires.

Although you may think that running your own survey is more cost effective, it is very labour intensive and takes staff away from their primary function. Our extensive experience and knowledge will ensure a high quality survey experience at a very reasonable rate.

Please contact us on 0131 337 6535 or email us at enquiries@intimedata.com to find out more.

Yes, we can help organisations undertake internal and external surveys.  Our main expertise and knowledge is in the healthcare sector however we have run extensive surveys for pharmaceutical companies, food companies and PCTs/LHBs.

Please contact us on 0131 337 6535 or email us at enquiries@intimedata.com to find out more.

InTime Data Ltd

Unit 4

Fairview Estate

Beech Road

HIGH WYCOMBE

HP11 1XU

Please remember send them by recorded delivery for safety.

Yes, we have a great deal of experience in contacting people on your behalf - whether it's to undertake a survey or sending out information about a new service.

We can also manage the feedback or responses, thus taking a large administrative load off your support staff. Our costs are very favourable in comparison to undertaking the exercise in-house, and all the data is secure and confidential.

If you would like to find out more, please call us on 0131 337 6535 and speak to Denis or Jane, or email us at enquiries@intimedata.com.

We will continue to run the surveys as in previous years. GPAQ is still an approved tool for GP Appraisals.

You may want to consider the added benefit of being able to compare year on year results to track your practice’s performance. It will also allow you to contrast and compare with the national patient survey.

Please contact us on 0131 337 6535 or email us at enquiries@intimedata.com for further information.

Here are some basic guidelines that we recommend;

1. Decide whether to collect the questionnaires in the surgery or allow patients to take them home and post them. We strongly recommend the former!

2. If you are conducting individual surveys, make sure each doctor or nurse understands that their questionnaires are numbered for them, and they must keep them separate from each other's.

3. When you send us completed questionnaires please send them recorded delivery for safety.

4. Remember to identify the questionnaires either in bundles, or individually.

Please contact us on 0131 337 6535 or email us at enquiries@intimedata.com to ensure that you get all the information you need.

GPAQ stands for General Practice Assessment Questionnaire and is a patient questionnaire which was originally developed by the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre at The University of Manchester for the 2003 GP contract.

Building on several years of development and testing, GPAQ helps practices find out what patients think about their care.

Individual practices are welcome to use and adapt if required, GPAQ V2, for their own surveys provided that acknowledgement is given; i.e. the copyright statement “© GPAQ is copyright University of Cambridge and University of Manchester” is included, and provided the GPAQ questionnaire is not used for commercial services.*

GPAQ V3: A new beta version of GPAQ is now available and is designed to encompass Directed Enhanced Service (DES) for Patient Participation through local surveys.

*Exceptions to this are licensed operators including InTime Data

• The best way to explain the centile ranking is to imagine (or even draw) a symmetrical hill (Standard Distribution curve to any mathematicians), then draw a horizontal line joining the bottom edges of the hill.
• If we imagine that the very peak of the hill represents the average  / mean score,  we then draw a line from this score at the peak to the horizontal line across the bottom. Where it touches the bottom is the 50th centile.
• The end of the hill to the right is 100th Centile and the one to the left is the 0 Centile. These points have the highest  / lowest scores.
• Any scores higher than the average will be on the right of the mean and by drawing a line down to the horizontal it will connect with a Centile higher than 50. The same applies to scores below, being to the left, and thus gaining Centile rankings below 50.
• Every question has it's own "hill" and every "hill" can be a different shape. Steep, shallow etc.

The Median is always the value achieved, awarded etc. by the middle practice in any set of values. So if there are 5 practices the third one is always the Median. 7 practices it will be the 4th etc. etc.

1. NPCRDC used to issue new Means every year but as the survey was longer used in the QOF they stopped doing this and InTime Like all other operators used the last published dataset) when analysing individual practices, we need to be consistent with and our model reflects these Mean Values.

2. To make the LHB / PCT analyses make sense we believe that we must show the National Mean as well as the Local Mean. Having a Local Median and National Mean value would, we think, cause melt down in some surgeries!

We believe this is more informative and a more accurate way of assessing and particularly of tracking performance. If we used the Median then the 6th ranking Practice in a LHB would always be awarded the 50th centile and this would be the case even if the mean values went up or down. This would mean that the relative performance of the practices would be "lost" as the standards improved.

There are nine values in the table below - the middle one, E, is the median.

GPAQ Version 2 is a patient questionnaire which was developed at the National Primary Care Research and Development Centre at The University of Manchester specifically for the 2003 QOF part of the GP contract.

Building on several years of development and testing, GPAQ helped practices find out what patients think about their care.

It specifically focuses on aspects of general practice that are not covered elsewhere in the Quality and Outcomes Framework - for example, access, inter-personal aspects of care and continuity of care.

GPAQ V2 can either be administered by post or after consultations in the surgery. Individuals GPs can use it or Practice Nurses, for whom there is a separate version.

This requirement was removed from the QOF in 2008.

GPAQ Version 3 is specifically designed to encompass Directed Enhanced Service (DES) for Patient Participation through local surveys.

GPAQ has been widely used in the UK and validated over a number of years. A new beta version of GPAQ is now available and is designed to encompass Directed Enhanced Service (DES) for Patient Participation through local surveys.

A small number of questions in GPAQ are designed to be identical to the 2011/2012 version of the national GP Patient Survey which will continue to be run. This will enable practices to benchmark themselves against national and local scores.

The advice for GPAQ Version 2 was 50 per individual and/or 25 per 1,000 patients on the practice list. We believe that this is the same for GPAQ V3.

GPAQ is still an approved tool for GP Appraisals and remains the most suitable questionnaire to assess care from individual doctors (especially when used post-consultation), as the national GP survey only gives results at practice level. GPs may therefore wish to continue to use GPAQ v2 or V3 for their own appraisals etc.

Please contact us on 0131 337 6535 or email us at enquiries@intimedata.com for further information.

This way it is completely clear what you have asked us to do and we can invoice you correctly.

You can fax it to us on 0131 337 8703, or email it back to us.

In order for our data capture people to process your questionnaires correctly, they must know which surgery each one comes from and, if you are doing individual surveys, which individual the questionnaire relates to.

If you are returning all the questionnaires through the practice you should always identify your bundles of questionnaires - with the project or practice number (the four figure number we give you e.g. 7941).

If you are conducting individual surveys, your bundles should also be identified with the individual's initials.

If you are handing out the questionnaires for patients to return themselves:

If you are handing out questionnaires for patients to return by themselves, it is vital that you mark each questionnaire you hand out with the project/practice number and the individual's initials. When they come back separately, we have no other way of identifying them.

We strongly advise that you collect as many surveys as possible before the patients leave the surgery. Experience tells us that the response rates are very much lower when patients are allowed to take questionnaires home.

If you are uncertain what to do, please call us on 0131 337 6535 or email us at enquiries@intimedata.com before you send them in!

Not directly but conducting a patient survey is an essential part of the new DES process. The new DES says:

“The Patient Participation DES aims to promote the proactive engagement of patients through the use of effective Patient Reference Groups (PRGs) and to seek views from practice patients through the use of a local patient survey.”

“The key requirements of the patient participation arrangements agreed by negotiators are that GP practices:

• develop a structure that gains the views of patients and enables the practice to obtain feedback from the practice population, e.g. PRG;
• agree areas of priority with their PRG;
• collate patient views through the use of a patient survey;
• provide the PRG with an opportunity to discuss survey findings and reach agreement with the PRG on changes to services;
• agree action plan with PRG and seek PRG agreement to implementing changes;
• publicise the actions taken and subsequent achievement.”

“Around £60m of released investment will be available to practices, provided that they successfully meet these requirements (equivalent in total to £1.10 per registered patient).”

Local practice surveys should be open to a sample of the practice population. The group of patients surveyed may include patients in the PRG, but would normally be a wider group of patients than just those in the PRG.

Yes. The DES is not prescriptive about how the survey group is chosen, but the practice should make a reasonable effort to ensure the group is representative of the practice population.

The DES does not give any guidance for the size of the survey group. The guidance states:

“It is the responsibility of the practice to demonstrate to its PRG that the proposed survey or methodology it chooses as the vehicle for undertaking the local practice survey is credible. Criteria for assessing credibility include an assessment by the practice that the processes used for sampling and analysing are sufficient to provide ‘the reasonable person’ with confidence that the reported outcomes are valid.”

GPAQ advice is that to be statistically valid there should be 25 responses per 1,000 patients on their list, with a minimum of 50 for practices of less than 2,000. For individual reports 50 per GP was the stated minimum.

No. The survey group does not have to stay the same. The practice can change the survey group in order to obtain the views of a different cross section of its registered population. The practice may also find that the make-up of their patient list evolves over the course of a year, if so, the survey group should change to reflect this.

No, there is no set of pre-approved questions for the patient survey. But GPAQ Version 3 has been specifically designed to satisfy the DES requirements.

Yes, the national GP patient survey will continue for 2011/12. The national survey focuses on a standard range of national issues. The local practice survey should focus on local patient issues as agreed with the PRG. The results of the national survey may flag issues that the practice and PRG wish to explore further in the local survey; however GPAQ V3 deliberately has some identical questions from the national GP survey which will allow practices to benchmark and compare their performance.