MOST years have a pattern to them, punctuated by the ‘big’ events – Christmas, Easter, summer holidays, Halloween, Bonfire Night, the Grand National, Warrington Walking Day.

There are, of course, many other events that come around with clockwork regularity.

One that might have escaped your attention but is highly anticipated by me is the result of the Warrington GP Patient Survey, which has become one of my annual highlights.

For the uninitiated, it’s the time of year when patients across the town get to decide which are Warrington’s best and worst-rated GP surgeries.

The way it works is that surveys are sent out – this year it was almost 9,500 – and respondents get to rate their surgeries on a number of criteria, things such as how easy is it to get through on the phone, how easy is it to book an appointment, access to online services and out-of-hours services.

Regular readers of this column should, by now, have guessed what’s coming – Penketh Health Centre taking its usual bottom place.

In fact, it was suggested to me that all I really needed to do was to copy and paste last year’s column.

Last year, I reported: “Actually being able to book an appointment is such a labyrinthine, Kafkaesque process that it’s no wonder patients aren’t satisfied and give consistently low marks.”

And this year’s survey revealed only 28 per cent of patients at Penketh Health Centre said it was 'easy' to get through to someone.

I suppose for the sake of openness, I must reveal I have a vested interest. I am a patient at Penketh Health Centre and I would really, really like to see it climb up the table.

Rather than launching an attack, I thought that this year, I’d look at this survey from a different angle.

So my first question is exactly how many surveys were return by Penketh patients? That would be helpful to know because if it’s a very small sample, it would be easy to skew the results.

And I think there’s some psychology at work here. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Penketh Health Centre is perfect (it’s not) or that there isn’t room for improvement (there is) but I do wonder if people in Penketh are locked into a mindset that the health centre isn’t very good when in fact it might actually be better than their perception.

I will use as an example my most recent interaction with Penketh Health Centre. Being a man of a certain age, I am eligible for a vaccination (not Covid) and rang the health centre to make an appointment.

I did have to wait a few minutes to get through but it wasn’t an inordinately long time. When I got through, I asked about my vaccination and was told they would have to speak to the practice nurses and get back to me.

That same day, I was called back and an appointment made. It had to be delayed slightly because I’d only just had my second Covid jab and they wanted to leave seven days in between the two vaccinations.

And on the day of my jab, with full coronavirus precautions in place, the whole process was handled smoothly and professionally.

So if you’d asked me to fill in a patient satisfaction form, Penketh Health Centre would have been given high marks.

But as I said earlier, I really think the people of Penketh may be locked into a particular mindset where the health centre is concerned.

Even a casual glance at Penketh social media shows there’s a small but vociferous section of the population who have turned moaning into an artform. They’ll moan about almost everything in a way that other parts of the town don’t seem to. Some people there really to have a chip on their shoulder.

Nevertheless, it would be good if next year’s survey saw some improvement in Penketh Health Centre’s standing.

Interestingly, last year’s column also reported on the ‘culture war’ between those who didn’t want to wear masks during the pandemic and those who thought face masks were an essential tool in combating the spread of the virus.

As the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same. I really could have just copied and pasted it, couldn’t I?