Practice input has been crucial

GP practices are demanding clients, and the practices which have so far bought Sites4Doctors have been relentless in their demands for improvements and additions to the package. We have made it an act of faith to respond positively and quickly to all feedback and constructive criticicism.

This ongoing process, which began in August 2004, has produced numerous minor improvements to the package as well as a number of major enhancements. Every significant change, whether initiated by us or by feedback from clients, is recorded in the Latest News page and is also notified directly to all practice site administrators and editors by email.

Major changes resulting directly from practice input include:

• Improvements to the repeat-prescription ordering system, allowing patients to choose the surgery from which they collect their prescriptions and sending those who give their email addresses an email confirmation
• The addition to the Surgery details page of a list of all practice staff who work at that surgery
• The addition of the advanced hit-logging and visit counter system, which had to be discontinued because of the unacceptably heavy burden it placed on the database server
• The addition of an extra field, Additional information, to the Surgery information page, so that practices can use free text to explain anything that cannot be defined in the fixed fields
• A facility for practices to delete obsolete and inappropriate postings from the Comments and Suggestions Box
• The addition of a secure practice intranet facility
• The addition of alternative Contact us and Opening hours buttons to access the Surgery details page
• Improvements to the presentation of main and branch surgery details
• Improvements to the handling of the About us pages, showing many more job categories correctly grouped and sorted, and allowing a group photograph to be displayed at the head of the main About us page
• The addition of the EMIS Access button, which allows registered patients to use the more secure repeat-prescription ordering and appointment booking facilities offered by EMIS