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Can InTime Data help with contacting patients?
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Yes, we have a lot of experience in contacting people on your behalf - whether it's to undertake a survey or sending out a mailshot about a new service, reminders for annual check-ups or treatments such as vaccinations and any other important messages you want your patients to have. We can also manage the feedback or responses for you, thus taking a big 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.
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Will InTime Data be running GPAQ surveys in 2009-10?
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We will be running surveys in 2009-10 as in previous years. We will continue to run the surveys as in previous years and 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 for further information.
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Can InTime Data organise any kind of survey?
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Yes, we are happy to help organisations undertake internal and external surveys. Our main expertise and knowledge is in the healthcare sector and in the past we have run surveys for pharmaceutical companies, food companies and PCTs/LHBs.
We can help you design your survey, or we can send out your survey on your stationery. Because we have done a lot of this, our costs are very reasonable. Although you may think that running your own survey is more cost effective, it is very labour intensive and takes practice staff away from their primary function.
If you would like to talk to us about surveys - large or small - please call us on 0131 337 6535 or email us at enquiries@intimedata.com and we will talk you through the options.
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What is the best way of organising my survey?
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Although we can give you some general suggestions, you should call or email us for help if you are concerned about how to do it. It is much easier for us to advise you before anything goes wrong!
Here are some general guidelines:
1 Decide whether to collect the questionnaires in the surgery or allow patients to take them home and post them. Experience tells us that sending them off with patients is not the best way to get completed forms, and you have no control over when and how they come back to us.
2 If you are doing 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. Create a box or tray for each individual.
3 When you send us completed questionnaires and are not using our reply paid service, please send them recorded delivery for safety.
4 Remember to identify the questionnaires either in bundles, or individually.
There are lots of other things - please call us before you do anything which you are uncertain about.
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Where do I send the questionnaires?
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InTime Data Ltd
Roundwood House
134-136 Lane End Road
High Wycombe
HP12 4HN
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What does GPAQ stand for?
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GPAQ is a patient questionnaire which has been developed at 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.
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 can either be administered by post or after consultations in the surgery.
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What are centile rankings?
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- 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.
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What is the difference between Mean and Median?
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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.
There are two reasons we work with the mean.
1. Every year the NPCRDC issue new Means (Not Median) when analysing individual practices, we need to be consistent with them and our model reflects their 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 Anglesey 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.
| Practice |
Score |
Score |
| A |
3 |
3 |
| B |
4 |
4 |
| C |
4 |
4 |
| D |
5 |
5 |
| E |
5 |
5 |
| F |
5 |
5 |
| G |
6 |
6 |
| H |
6 |
7 |
| I |
7 |
7 |
|
|
|
| Mean |
5 |
5.2 |
| Median |
5 |
5 |
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Do I need to send you a signed agreement?
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Yes. 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.
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Do I need to identify each surgery?
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In order for our data capture people to process your questionnaires correctly, they must know which surgery each one comes from and which doctor or practice nurse the questionnaire relates to if you are doing individual surveys.
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. 5941).
If you are doing individual surveys, your bundles should also be identified with the person'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.
If you are uncertain what to do, please call us before you send them in!
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How do I return the questionnaires to you?
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If you have chosen the reply paid option, you can use the envelopes we provide which takes care of everything.
If you are paying for the return postage, 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.
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Can I change my mind about my order?
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Certain things can be changed, but the number of questionnaires to be analysed is determined by the patient list size and/or the number of GPs.
You can add additional items such as certificates, posters etc later on but we charge a small premium for doing this after your initial order has begun.
