News and reports

This checklist is a tool for people with a learning disability and their carer or supporters to fill in before attending an annual health check. It aims to help you recognise when things aren’t right, take actions to keep healthy, and to speak up and seek help.

Following patient feedback, the NHS has committed to making it easier and quicker for you to get the help you need from your GP and the healthcare community around your surgery. Our newly updated booklet explains what changes you may see, and how you can help us monitor them.

102 people in Knowle West, Hartcliffe and Weston-super-Mare spoke to us about their experiences of health and social care. They shared the barriers and failures that prevented them from accessing local services, and what improvements are needed.

Eligible people are being invited by the NHS to have a top-up Covid-19 vaccination this spring. In line with expert advice, the NHS is offering Covid-19 vaccinations to people who are at increased risk of serious illness from the virus – including those aged 75 and over (by 30 June 2024), residents of care homes for older adults, and those aged 6 months and over with a weakened immune system.

Patients will be able to have scans and tests at a new Community Diagnostic Centre (CDC) from April 2024 as part of a wider NHS initiative to increase access to diagnostic procedures.

If your GP refers you to a specialist, you usually have the right to choose which hospital you go to. You can choose a hospital in your area – or one further away if you wish.

The Care Quality Commission, independent regulator of health and social care services, inspected Maternity Services at North Bristol NHS Trust in November 2023.

We'd like to hear from people living in South Gloucestershire about their experience of needing a care assessment for adult social care, and what care and support you need at home and in their daily life to remain independent.

Our workplan sets out the areas of health and social care we will be looking at over the coming financial year. It also outlines the research we plan to carry out in order to help improve local services.

Anyone who is dissatisfied with any aspect of the service received by Healthwatch Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) can make a complaint.

Read the minutes of our November 29 2023 Prioritisation Panel, where we come together with our volunteers to discuss the health and social care issues you've raised and what we can do to bring about change.

People can now get treatment for seven common health conditions directly from their local pharmacist, without needing a GP appointment.