MINUTES FROM THE PRACTICE PATIENT PARTICIPATION GROUP MEETING
1 OCTOBER 2014
1.Attendees
The following attended the meeting:
Mr Colin Johnson (Practice Manager)
Mr Chris Bulford
Mrs Yvonne Turner
Dr Fiona Walker
2.Introductions
The meeting started at 15:00 with Practice Manager (PM) welcoming members to the meeting and commenced the introductions.
3.Apologies
The following patients sent their apologies:
Mrs Patricia Moriarty
Dr Richard Sykes
4.Minutes of last meeting
The minutes from the previous meeting held on 2 July 2014 were read.
5.Practice Update
The PM gave an update on the following topics:
a.Painting and Decorating. The practice is still waiting for our recommended painter and decorator to refurbish the vacant consulting room on the ground floor. Once this work has been undertaken it is intended to offer the room to other outside clinicians for a fee. There has been interest shown by an Osteopath and it is hoped other similar clinicians will book the room generating some income for the practice.
b.Named GP. In accordance with an NHS England directive the practice has contacted all its patients who are over 75 and told them who their named GP is. Chris Bulford questioned what benefit this would have for patient care. The PM stated as all patient notes are available
to all the GPs at the practice the quality of care would remain exactly the same regardless of which GP a patient saw. Yvonne Turner stated she liked having Dr Walker as her named GP
although she was particularly delighted with the consultations she had with Dr Ravi Parekh when Fiona was not available. The named GP initiative is something older patients have requested and it was something quite easy to achieve. There will be no difference in patient care.
c.Surgery Opening Hours 7 Days a Week. Fresh from the Conservative Party Conference this headline grabbing topic was discussed. The initiative is to offer patients access to doctors every day of the week at the local surgery. However, what has not been advertised is the fact patients already have access to a doctor whenever the need arises. A patient calling NHS 111 could be directed to the ‘Out of Hours’ service if the need was assessed as such. There was also a question of how the 7 day opening would be funded considering 8000 GPs are within a few years of retirement age and there being a shortage of doctors wishing to go into General Practice.
6.Request for poster from Alzheimers Society
At the last meeting Mrs Moriarty requested the PM contact the Alzheimers Society and obtain some posters that spelt out the symptoms of Alzheimers. The PM contacted the society and they responded:
“Your email has been passed onto the Marketing Team. Unfortunately we don’t have any posters available which describe the symptons of dementia however we do have just generic awareness raising posters. Would a couple of these be OK instead?”
Consequently, we can only display the posters we currently have. Some more leaflets have been received and these have been placed in the waiting room areas.
7.‘Help Improve Your Healthcare Services’ Survey.
A recent survey conducted by NHS England was the ‘Help Improve Your Healthcare Services’ survey. This survey went out to over two thousand of our patients in July and the response rate has been one of the best we have ever had. The survey had a reply paid envelope which also helped to produce a good response rate. The full results of the survey will be announced once the closing date for submitting the response sheets has expired in October.
Chris Bulford was recently approached to take part in the ‘HAPPY London’ trail and asked how many trials are presented to the practice. The PM stated on average we received approx. 5 requests a year from various organisations (mainly university backed medical colleges) to conduct medical trials. Only those that are willing to reimburse the admin costs and meet the full approval of the partners are undertaken.
8.‘Friends and Family Test’.
This survey has been running in NHS hospitals for some time and from 1 December 2014 it will be rolled out to GP surgeries. The survey will be passed to patients at the end of their consultation and it will contain the following questions:
“How likely are you to recommend our services to friends and family if they need similar care or treatment?”
The responses are a tick box choice from:
“Extremely Likely”, “Likely”, “Neither likely nor unlikely”, “Unlikely”, “Extremely unlikely” and “Don’t know”.
There then follows a couple of free text questions:
“What is the main reason for the answer you have given?”
“Can you suggest anything that we could have done better during your time with us?”
The responses are then left at reception and the PM will collate them once a month and submit the results to NHS England. It was agreed by the group that this was a good idea and it is hoped people will provide some useful feedback. However, Chris did note that two of the outcomes to the first question were of no use, i.e. “Neither likely nor unlikely” and “Don’t know”.
9.Dr Fiona Walker – Update.
Dr Walker spoke to the group about further recent events that have taken place at the practice:
a.Comings and Goings. Since the last meeting we have said goodbye to Drs Charlotte Mackay and Ravi Parekh. However, we have taken on two further trainees, Drs Suzanna Jefferson and Krishna Muthukumarasamy. The new doctors are settling in well and both patients and staff are very happy with them. Once fully up to speed the practice will benefit from reduced waiting times for patients. Dr Sarah Cleverly left the practice last month to take up a new position in Bristol. She will be missed by both staff and patients however we will be replacing her this month. The new doctor’s details to be announced shortly.
b.Reception staff. It has been a turbulent year for our reception staff with some long periods of unavoidable sickness with staff undergoing surgical procedures. We have taken on agency staff to cover the shortfall but it is hoped we will have the full team back together again and in good health before the end of the year.
c.Extended Hours. The current late night opening on a Wednesday will be discontinued from 20 October and instead an early start on the Thursday surgery will commence. The early start surgery already running on the Tuesday morning is always well attended compared to the Wednesday evening and it is hoped the Thursday early session will prove equally as popular.
d.Patient list and recruiting GPs. The population of London is continuing to rise and Islington is likely to see a rise too. Our surgery is still accepting patients and will continue to do so. There is concern with recruiting new GPs and with the General Election coming up next year it is likely we will all see many headlines regarding GP practices and the NHS. Dr
Walker mentioned during our search for a replacement to fill Dr Cleverly’s position the number of applicants for the position was markedly down from when we last did a recruitment exercise. With 8000 GPs nearing retirement age within the next few years it will be interesting to see how, whichever party comes into government next year, how the new government decides to tackle this manpower problem.
10.AOB.
Chris did mention that with so many patients now having an email account future patient surveys could be conducted on-line. The practice does place its own practice survey on-line with the aid of Survey Monkey. The medical records held on our computer also hold patients email addresses, if provided, and these too are sometimes used for survey work. However, as many elderly people still do not access the internet the need for paper surveys will continue for some time yet.
11.Date of next meeting. The next meeting will take place on Wednesday 7th January 2015 at 15:00.
12.The meeting closed at 15:50.
Colin Johnson
Colin Johnson MBE
Practice Manager
Distribution:
Partners
All members of the PPPG