Patients in North Cumbria get a better GP practice website experience
The North Cumbria Primary Care Alliance recently turned to GPsurgery.net for expert guidance on adapting their practice websites to improve patient flow. A not-for-profit social enterprise, the Alliance provides primary care services to 103,000 patients through a network of seven GP practices operating in 16 locations across the region.
Helen Saint, project lead at GPsurgery.net, reviewed the seven practice websites to summarise the different features and navigation widgets used by each practice. She then worked to standardise and re-design the home pages to deliver the essential requirements set out by Lydia Hulme, Operations Coordinator at the North Cumbria Primary Care Alliance.
These included improving the site navigation to help patients find information more easily. The need for a common identity across the seven practices was achieved by incorporating the Alliance branding, including colour scheme, logo and Twitter feed.
The hub website for the North Cumbria Primary Care Alliance was also refreshed as part of the work carried out by Helen and the GPsurgery.net team. “The focus of the hub site is to help potential colleagues and health professionals find out more about the Alliance and how the organisation can support them,” says Lydia Hulme.
The hub website is also where Lydia now manages the jobs board. She says: “Having a uniform structure across the network means I can post jobs once and broadcast them to all seven websites, saving practices the task of posting jobs to individual sites.”
Speaking after the project was completed, Helen Saint said: “The most satisfying part of the work was seeing a very tired group of practice website home pages become easily navigable, informative and more welcoming for patients to use.”
Follow these links to view the practice websites: