Creating a highly usable and accessible GP practice website

In 2021 – 2022 NHS Digital performed a study on GP practice website templates and from the results of this they developed a guide for Creating a highly usable accessible GP website for patients.

To assist practices further, a GP website benchmarking and improvement tool was developed which is an audit tool containing 50 items that would score your website as ‘Well’, ‘Adequate’ or ‘Inadequate’.  This tool focuses mainly on the content of your website, how easy it is to read and understand, where it is situated etc.

ICB’s across the country have started to provide the practices within their locality with funding to update their practice websites to meet the standards set out in this audit tool, if you haven’t started this project in your local area yet then it is likely you may hear from your ICB soon.

I have produced a 20-minute walkthrough video demonstrating how you can utilise the features in your SurgeryWeb dashboard to customise your website in order to significantly increase the number of green ‘Well’ items within the audit tool. I would recommend that you set aside some time along with any IT administrators or members of staff within your practice who may maintain your practice website and go through the video to see how you can adopt these changes to your own website.

Alternatively, SurgeryWeb have a new product currently in development which is built using the NHS design manual framework and will meet the ‘Well’ standard for all items within the audit tool. Once this has been completed, it will become the primary template offered to new customers but there will also be an option for existing customers to migrate to this new framework though there will be a small cost associated with this due to the time involved in migrating your existing content in to the new locations. If you would like to register your interest please just let me know via email and I will keep you updated.

Please note: The NHS guidance and benchmarking & improvement tool has been produced solely as guidance and it is not a requirement to do any of this, if you are happy with how your website currently performs then you do not need to make any changes, however there are many benefits to complying with the suggestions as your website is effectively your front door and if a patient can easily find what they are looking for then they wont need to contact your reception.

You can find the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7yZo1VsnQI

• 0:00 Creating a highly usable and accessible GP practice website
• 2:56 Overlays & Pop-ups
• 5:09 Navigation
• 9:12 Appointments Page
• 12:05 Prescriptions Page
• 13:07 Test Results Page
• 13:34 Contact Page
• 14:47 Register with this Practice Page
• 15:59 Other Pages and Final Items
• 18:21 New SurgeryWeb Development

If you have any questions or concerns at all about the audit tool or guidance, please feel free to get in touch.