ANNANDALE MEDICAL CENTRE

PATIENT REFERENCE GROUP REPORT

This report summarises development and outcomes of Annandale Medical Centre patient reference group (PRG) in 2011/12. A full copy of this report has been submitted to East Cheshire Primary Care Trust and can be obtained by contacting the surgery

It contains:

  1. What is a PRG
  2. Profile of practice population and PRG
  3. Process used to recruit to our PRG
  4. Priorities for the survey and how they were agreed
  5. Method and results of patient survey
  6. Resulting action plan and how it was agreed
  7. Progress made with the action plan
  8. Confirmation of our opening times.

1 What is a PRG

A patient participation group is a good way for patients and GP surgeries to work together in order to improve services and health care in the local community. The national association for patient participation or NAPP was set up in 1978 to promote patient participation. Their website, contains more information about patient participation and it’s role.

2 Profile of practice population and PRG

Practice population summary

Annandale Medical Centre has 5669 patients. Of these 2747 (48.5%) are male and 2914 (51.5%) are female.1220 of our patients are over 65. This accounts for 22% of our total practice population. Over 200 of our patients also reside in local residential or nursing homes.

Ethnicity

In recent years we have been asked to identify the ethnic origins of patients newly registering at the practice. To date we have this information available for 1975 individuals ie 35% of our patients. 89% have identified themselves as White British with other ethnic groups including :-

White (Irish)0.8%

White (other)3%

Carribean0.5%

African0.7%

Asian 4.5%

Other Mixed Background 0.5%

Indian2.8%

Pakistani0.1%

Chinese 0.2%

Other 0.5%

PRG profile

Annandale has both a virtual and face-to-face patient participation group. We have found it difficult to recruit individuals and increase the size of our face to face group due to work and other commitments of our patients. We have found that the average age of our virtual group is much lower than our face to face group. The charts below show the demographics of our groups in full.

Face to Face group

7 Members

Ethnic origin

White British 7

Age
Sex / 50-60 / 61-70 / 71-80 / >80
Male / 2
Female / 1 / 1 / 2 / 1

Virtual Group

11 members

Ethnic origin

White British 7

White Irish1

White other1

Indian / British Indian 1

Age
Sex / 20-30 / 31-40 / 41-50 / 51-60 / 61-70 / 71-80
Male / 2 / 1
Female / 3 / 1 / 3 / 1

We are always happy to welcome new members to either our face to face or our virtual patient participation group. If you would like more information about our groups please contact a member of our reception team or alternatively Janet Loynton our practice manager. Application forms are also available at our reception.

2 Process used to recruit to our PRG

  • We have a current Friends of the Practice group which has been running for many years. They have provided valuable input over the years with issues affecting the practice and we have always valued their opinions. We discussed the purpose of a PPG with the current members on a meeting on the 24th May 2011 The current Friends of the Practice group were keen to expand this new role further.
  • With our Patient participation group we agreed on terms of reference, code of conduct and an application form for prospective members to receive. This information is attached below and if you would like to become a member of either group you are welcome to complete the forms and send them to us.
  • We agreed as a practice with the current members to try and expand the group and to ensure it was representative. Over the last 12 months you may have noticed the ways in which we have tried to do this on visits to the surgery. We have put up posters and used our electronic board to help draw attention to the group. We have also added notices to our repeat prescriptions and informed new patients registering with the practice of the group.

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3 Priorities for the survey and how they were agreed

At Annandale Medical Centre we have been concerned for some time about our appointment service and how we can make the best use of our appointments to provide comprehensive care to our patients. We discussed our concerns with the PRG and asked them for suggestions for any other questions we could add to the survey. They received a copy of the survey before we carried it out to ensure they were happy with the questions.

4 Method and results of patient survey

Once we had established the priorities we developed the questions which can be viewed in the attachment below

We asked patients who attended the surgery between the 27th February and the 9th March 2012 to complete the survey.

Survey results

Summary of our Survey Results

  • The majority of our patients completing the survey had been seen in an appointment during the last 3 months
  • Most people book their appointments using the phone and a smaller number attend in person
  • 25% said they would like to consider an online booking service
  • Most people (55%) said that they would like to book up to a week in advance for routine non urgent appointments with a smaller number wishing to book up to 4 weeks in advance (25%). Only 3% wanted to book routine appointments on the day
  • Overwhelmingly most people were happy to be asked if their problem was urgent (87%)
  • The majority of patients who had used the phlebotomy service were happy with the service they had received (68% rating it good or excellent)
  • We also received a number of separate comments regarding the ability for patients to see a doctor of their choice the same day for urgent problems

5 Resulting action plan and how it was agreed

We discussed the results of the survey as a practice team and also with our PRG. We decided on several action points from the survey and decided on an action plan to take these comments forward.

The main actions were:

  • Change our booking service to cater for patients wishing to book less far in advance.
  • To reserve “same day” appointments for “Urgent” medical problems which cannot wait until the next working day. To help us with this we are training our reception staff to ask if a problem is urgent for patients requesting a same day appointment. In order to help this work better we may also look to introduce a telephone triage system which the doctors have trialled previously.
  • To look into how online booking might be able to work
  • To allow patients to write down the time and date of their appointment themselves to help reduce DNA rates

When booking an appointment in the future you will notice these changes being used.

6 The action plan

A summary of the progress as of 31 March 2012 is:

You said… / We did… / The result is…
You would like to be able to book less far in advance / We are in the process of adjusting our pre-bookable appointments to allow fewer to be booked 4w in advance and more 1w in advance / It is too early to see how this change has affected our appointments but it is something we plan to review in next years survey
You are happy to be asked if your problem is urgent or routine when requesting a same day appointment / We are in the process of training all our reception staff in how to undertake this change. / We plan to introduce this change in the next few weeks
Some of our patients suggested they would like to be able to book appointments online / This is an area that we are investigating with the suppliers of our clinical software to see if it is possible and appropriate / No changes yet to the current system but we will inform you if this becomes possible
Some of our patients commented that they wanted to be able to see a doctor of their choice on an urgent basis / We reviewed whether this would be possible looking at current systems / We felt that this request was not possible however we hope that the changes to our appointments system mentioned above will allow individual doctors to become booked up less far in advance and facilitate this
Our patient participation group commented on the DNA rate in the practice and ways of reducing this was discussed / We discussed both the text reminder service and information brought to the group about a study done looking at patients writing down their own appointments / The test reminder service is already helping to reduce our DNA rate and We are looking at introducing facilities at our reception desk for patients to write down their own appointment

7 Confirmation of our opening times

As a result of the survey we have not changed our opening times. They are:

You can call the surgery Monday to Friday 8am – 6.30pm

The surgery reception is open Monday to Friday 8.30am – 6.30pm Thursday late evening until 8pm

Surgery times are Monday to Friday between 8.30am & 6.30pm Thursday late evening until 7.30pm. Late evening surgery by appointment only

Outside of these times please call 01625 502999

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