Dr V K Ramu Bsc Mbbs
DR S J WITTS MBBS, MRCGP, DTM+H, Dip Occ Med
SHEERNESS HEALTH CENTRE
250-262 HIGH STREET
SHEERNESS, KENT, ME12 1UP
TELEPHONE: 01795 585255
FAX: 01795 585842
EMAIL:
Dr Witts Patient Participation Group
Patient Participation Year 1 Report 2013
Component 1The PRG membership includes young and older members, men and women, disabled, mentally ill, chronically ill and well patients. We do not have any minority groups within the group, although we have tried.
The group is only attended and intended for practice registered patients.
We used the information provided by our CCG to identify the practice population profile and our knowledge in practice.
We operate an open forum so any registered patient is welcome to attend our meetings. We have not been able to include all groups of patient i.e. ethnic minority, We have tried inviting patients individually but have not been very successful in recruiting these patients.
We have a physical group which we also keep in touch with by email (and post for those without)
The Practice/Patient Participation Group have agreed a Constitution outlining our aims and objectives.
We have an open invitation to our patient forum with posters, information on NHS choices website and we use our JX board to advertise coming meetings.
Component 2
Reason for practice survey discussed with group and suggestions of questions offered. Survey was chosen by the group members and used in practice over a one week period to canvas 100 patients.
Communication with the practice was highlighted. This was deemed very important by members of the group and also from comments made on the survey.
We took the views of the group into account when looking at the survey results, including the comments made by individual patients and used this to form an action plan of what patients were telling us was important. Everyone seemed to agree that the doctor was well liked and popular but not available enough.
We agreed to include telephone consultations in our survey to see if patients liked them, if they were being used, what they were being used for and if patients knew about them.
The most common problem that patients complained about was getting though to the Practice on the phone.
Component 3
We used a paper survey form to gain patients views
Although email is becoming more popular the Practice did not feel it was in a position to use this media as it did not have enough Practice coverage.
100 patients completed the survey.
We distributed the survey to 100 patients who had appointments during the week. We did not differentiate but gave it out to all patients. Patients were asked to complete the survey and put it into the box in reception.
Component 4
We discussed the outcome of the survey in our group meeting of 31.10.12 we recapped how we sampled our patients and looked at the results. Following discussions at our previous meeting regarding appointments and telephoning and using the results of the survey we formed an action plan to work on improving our patient experience.
Telephoning the Practice has been an ongoing problem for quite some time but we did not realise how big an issue this was for patients. We found the views of our group members very useful in providing a snapshot of how things are for a patient.
We agreed in our discussions to look at other options to improve the ability for patients to get through to us on the telephone.
Component 5
Using the view of the patient participation group and our survey results we agreed an action plan.
Since conducting our survey we have put two receptionists on in the morning solely to take phone calls and deal with patients over the counter. In the afternoon we have also put on two receptionists to provide an additional receptionist to help with the phone calls in the afternoons. This has required us to rework staff rotas and work schedules.
We have also put forward a business case to have an additional PC in reception, which has been agreed. However it does require new cabling to be installed first, so we are still waiting for this to be done.
We have been successful in recruiting a new full time GP but are still trying to get a part time GP.
Component 6
See appendix A