THREE SWANS SURGERY PATIENT PARTICIPATION GROUP
ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
MONDAY 11 JULY 2011
Present: Olwyn Tanner Jillian Jerred Caren Clerk
Patrick Moore Valerie Gillett Linda Griffiths
Linda Knapp Bill Roper Daphne Torok
Margaret Roper Linda Salter Tessa Wakeman
Jennifer Blake Don Cross Keith Blake
Apologies: Ken Edwards Judy Cross Janet Trueman
The meeting opened with Dr Helena McKeown informing us about the NHS Reform White Paper on Health & Social Care. 181 amendments had been made following the Listening pause earlier this year.
There will be a new Bill regarding Hospital & Community Provision. All current structures will be dismantled in favour of Localism, the service being user led. There will be GP Commissioning groups with some external input, locally called Sarum NHS. Practices with similar ethos will combine into clusters making a Strategic Health Authority.
In England only there will be fourteen Clinical Senates serving populations of approximately 10 million and comprising nurses, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, hospital consultants and GPs. Each Governance Body will have two lay members to ensure clinicians use of limited funds. The result if that Andrew Lansley, the Minister for Health, removes the government’s 1948 commitment to the NHS.
There are likely to be ten smaller divisions – clinical communities with local community groups, of 160,000 throughout Wiltshire. Local councillors will be involved in the local group. Wiltshire is ‘ahead of the game’ with GP involvement. This restructuring is thought by the Chair of the College of General Practitioners likely to take 1,000 of 33,000 GPs out of daily clinical work.
Dr McKeown then responded to various questions from the meeting, commenting that Wiltshire gets only half the cost per head of a patient in London and that she was due to meet with our local MP, John Glenn regarding local, particularly mental health, care.
Dr Hugh Bond then informed the meeting about this years’ IPSIS/MORI GP Patient Survey.
The payment the practice gets is dependent on the results and there were some ‘can do better’ areas within mostly very good results. Some of the highlights he mentioned were that overall care received 96% very or fairly satisfactory and was in the top three of easy to speak to GP on the telephone, ease of getting through and booking an appointment ahead. There were a number, however, who felt it was not easy to get an appointment within two working days. 87% were happy with the available opening hours but 14% felt unable to get an appointment more than two days in advance.
Consideration is being given to setting up a Patient Reference Group ‘virtually’ in addition to the PPG – via email, possibly achieving involvement of a slightly younger patient base in this process.
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Margaret Roper, Chairman, reported on the various activities during the year which included Alison Kidner, Pharmacist, offering confidential sessions to rationalise medication; a talk on the ‘Winter Blues’ in October, ‘Get involved’ posters were displayed in January regarding reforms; fruit and vegetables were put out in the Waiting Rooms to encourage patients to take some away to reinforce the ‘5 a Day’ initiative but there had been considerable reluctance to do so and further encouragement methods may need to be considered before reintroducing this. Recipe books had been provided from the dietician and the benefits of exercise by Trish Cowie who had given out pedometers and done a session including new age bowls and curling which was repeated four weeks later. A walk around the town ending at the Arts Centre had been a feature in June. A Clinical Psychologist booked to talk on chronic fatigue will need to be rearranged for later in the year as this did not take place due to the rebuild of the premises.
An approach was made to the practice by South Wilts Grammar School for Industry Day to involve more young people in the PPG as a project, define the problem and provide solutions. Tessa and Margaret had visited them in order to see other businesses, etc who were involved.
Some solutions offered were texting, leaflets, iphone apps. These were to be presented to the GPs, however parental permission to do so had not been gained and so this did not take place.
Salisbury is a ‘Heart City’ for the next three years – part of a British Heart Foundation nationwide campaign. They are coming to visit in six weeks time and propose a series of walks.
Following discussion regarding the rationale, the meeting concluded with a nem con vote in favour of the proposal put forward from the Chair that “This Patient Participation Group formally agree and adopt a Constitution”. A small sub- group of this PPG will research this and meet on 8th September in order to move this proposal appropriately forward for this practice and its patients.