Primary care includes general practice, community pharmacy, dental and optometry (eye health) services. Primary care services provide the first point of contact to the healthcare system - acting as the ‘front door’ of the NHS - and are fundamental to people’s experiences of health and care.
Our primary care priority
The focus of our primary care priority is to challenge the inequity of access which people tell us exists. We do this by seeking to understand the needs of our population and by providing information and advice accordingly. Alongside this we challenge and influence the healthcare system via our seats on a number of local boards and committees. Ultimately, we work to ensure that the population of Surrey know how and when to access primary care services and that services work better together to meet the needs of their local populations.
Recent work under this priority
Our recent work under this priority has included;
- We have undertaken research to explore whether general practice is meeting the needs of people who are experiencing domestic abuse within Surrey, and what improvements could be made to better meet these needs. You can read our full report, and a one pager summary here - In safe hands - Domestic abuse survivors experiences of general practice - July 2025 - Healthwatch Surrey. Systems partners, general practice and external stakeholder organisations representing survivors attended a convening workshop in May to review the findings and agree short and long term recommendations. We look forward to working with these partners over the coming months to make some of these recommendations a reality.
- In May and June we asked parents of school age children about whether their children had sight (eye) tests and if there were any barriers to having these tests. 87 Surrey parents/carers responded to our survey or spoke to us at our community engagement events, which took place in areas classified as deprived in some way1 in Guildford & Waverley, Farnham and Reigate & Banstead. You can read more here - Out of sight, out of mind: parents and carers understanding of sight tests for school aged children - Healthwatch Surrey
- We are we are currently looking at online access to GP services and would welcome feedback from everyone across Surrey https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/HwSyOnlineAccessGPServices/
Reports and bulletins relating to this priority can be found under the Access to primary care category of our reports section on our website.
You can find out more about how primary care fits within the wider healthcare system on our Understanding Healthcare page.