Brunswick Medical Centre

Brunswick Medical Centre

Patient Participation Meeting 3rd October 2013

Present: Staff - Jess Kaur – Practice Manager, Alpa Bisarya Hurley Group Business Manager, Dr Rosemary Mahungu Lead GP, Gina Mlanga Nurse Practitioner.

Patients: Patricia Christopher, Karen Hennessy, Harvey Bass, Isobel McMillan, Ademola Fashina, Ruth Orme, Ludmila Neacsu, Sidney Kenwood, Margaret White, Wendy Rowe, Tewelde Weldelibanos.

Apologies: Sioux Thorne Regional Manager.

Welcome and Introductions
Purpose of meeting - Jess advised meeting not for individual issues but an opportunity for patients to feed back any concerns or issues relating to the services provided by the surgery and for the surgery to communicate changes within the NHS that affect our patients and services. Promote better communication between the patients and the surgery and an opportunity for patients to be involved in decisions that lead to changes to the services provided by the surgery.
Update from Brunswick team.

Role of the nurse practitioner – discussed what Gina is able to do, see acute on the day patients, referrals and issue prescriptions.
Dr Rosemary Mahungu explained how she is currently doing medication reviews in order to ensure patients are receiving the most appropriate care for their medical conditions.
Appointment system explained – range of appointments, ‘on the day’, routine and telephone consultations, emergency etc. It is important that patients give as much information to the receptionist at the time of booking to ensure they are offered the correct appointment type.
Online consultations – Alpa explained process of online consultations.

Concerns/Issues raised by patients

Why was no-one from the Hurley Group present at the meeting so that any issues could be raised with them directly? – Jess explained that Sioux Thorne – Regional Manager was due to attend but unfortunately was unable to make it as she had to go to another meeting and sent her apologies. Jess assured the patients that their comments would be passed onto the Hurley Group.
Patients felt that none of the promises made by the Hurley Group had been kept, in particular patients who had been presented during the tendering process felt they had been let down as they had expected improvements to service and staffing levels to be as indicated by the Hurley Group to be delivered, there has been no additional clinics as promised, eg: baby clinic, physiotherapy, acupuncture etc
Why was there only one permanent GP? Patients were concerned that the GP would feel overwhelmed with work and leave also. Jess explained that an advert had gone out to recruit another permanent GP. However it takes time to recruit as suitable candidates have to give notice to previous employer.
Locums – Patients expressed concerns regarding the calibre of locums used, what checks had been made on these locums?. Jess advised that all locums are checked prior to booking, to ensure they have the required qualifications and are registered with the General Medical Council and have the adequate insurance. However the use of locums would not be as before, and only locums that are known to the surgery would be used in future to cover leave, in the meantime until a new GP had been recruited Dr Majid who was familiar with the surgery and patients, would continue to work at Brunswick.
One patient advised that her consultation with a locum had not been documented on her notes and only came to light when information was needed by her insurance company. Jess asked the patient to discuss this incident with her later so that it could be investigated.
Why was the surgery advertising for new patients when there was not adequate doctors or appointments ?– Alpa advised that we are not allowed to close the surgery list and if the list size increased then we would be able to increase the number of GP sessions.
Currently there is a two/three week wait for appointment with the GP. Jess advised patients that appointment availability is monitored and that there are emergency appointments available, any patient that needed to be seen by a GP would be accommodated. If a patient needed to be seen then they would be seen by the nurse practitioner for anything, such as coughs/colds etc. If the nurse practitioner felt the patient needed to be seen by the GP, she would consult the GP who would assess the patient. Once again it was important for patients to advise the receptionist of their symptons when booking the appointment so that they can seek advice from the GP for the most appropriate action.
Online Consultations– Alpa advised that this was where the online consultation service would be beneficial as not everyone needs to attend the surgery, patients responded that not many patients have access to computers and many are elderly and also if there was only one GP on site then that would be extra workload for the GP.
What was being done to support patients that could not speak English? Jess advised that interpreters can be booked, but need to give at least one week’s notice prior to appointment, there is also language line, however this can be time consuming as it is a three way conversation over the phone, and is usually only used if no other options available. Patients were asked to ensure that they notify the reception team at the time of booking appointment whether an interpreter will be needed.
Why was the nurse now only working 3 days, when this was the busiest time of the year with Flu? - Jess explained that this was something that had been discussed prior to her return and that as far as she was aware an audit had been done to ascertain the demand for nurse appointments, there had been a lot of DNA’s and the decision had been made to reduce the number of nurse sessions, with the nurse’s agreement. However the situation was constantly being monitored.
When would the Flu clinics start ?– Patients were advised that the surgery was expecting their vaccination stock by 4th October 2013. Flu letters had gone out to all eligible patients and clinics had been set at various times of the day from w/c 14/10/2013.
Was the current reception/admin team stable now? – Yes

Extraction of Patient Data – Health & Social Care Information Centre

Information about patients and the care will be used to plan and improve services for all patients. Can also be used by researchers and those planning health services to ensure the best care possible is provided for everyone.
Would like to link information from all different places where patients receive care such as, GP, hospital and community service to help provide a full picture.
Information extracted will be – postcode and NHS number to link patient records in a secure system. Your name will not be used.
Patients not wishing their information to be used need to ‘opt out’. Let reception know if you wish to do this.
Leaflets and posters have been displayed in the surgery

Annual Patient Survey

Jess explained that the surgery was planning it’s next annual survey and needed to discuss and agree with the patients present, what they thought the key priorities should be for the surgery. The survey will be conducted in January and the results will be published on the website and at the surgery.
Priorities agreed:

Clinical Care
Access – phone system
Appointments – types of appt, availability etc
Reception issues – e.g ‘ how helpful are the reception team’?
Opening times

7 Patient Focus Group - Jess explained that the surgery would like to start up a Patient Focus

Group, which will consist of 5 or 6 patients, who will meet 4 or 5 times a year and work closely with the Practice Manager. The Focus Group will provide a point of contact for both the Practice and patients registered at the surgery. It will help any patient who has a view on how the services provided by the Surgery might be improved or expanded whilst on the other hand; it can provide a sounding board for any new initiative which the surgery may wish to introduce. Patients who were interested were asked to provide their details.

Next Meeting TBC