Understanding user needs for primary care services

We wanted to understand the experiences of patients, GPs and related staff of primary health care in Wales We were looking in particular for experiences of digital interactions.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused many of us to have to interact with our GPs remotely. This only made the need for good digital healthcare services more pressing.

By thoroughly understanding the needs of patients and healthcare providers, NHS Wales would be able to make sound decisions when developing such services for the public.

Digital Services for Patients and the Public was the project sponsor. 

Also involved were:

• users and providers of patient-facing digital systems, including My Health Online
• GPs and GP practice nurses, managers and administration staff

‘Discovery’ is the first, research phase of Agile service design, the incremental approach to building services that CDPS champions. Discovery involves understanding the needs of users of a potential service – an essential step before considering ways to meet those needs.

As part of this discovery, CDPS interviewed the users and providers mentioned above about their:

• previous primary care experiences
• perceptions of primary care
• attitudes towards technology

These conversations yielded rich insights into what’s important to people receiving and providing primary care in Wales. Those insights helped us to build a picture of the wider Welsh primary care landscape, factoring in policy intent and other stakeholder perspectives such as those of government agencies beyond healthcare.

That will be the context within which new patient-facing digital services will sit. At the end of discovery, we were able to make informed recommendations – balancing user needs, broader stakeholder interests and government strategy – about the shape those future services might take.