Minutes of the Patient Group Meeting

Moorcroft Surgery

6.30pm – 8pm

31st March 2015

Present – Collette Ross (Practice Manager), Dr Debra Newell, Dr Geoff Hall, Dr Jorge Alegria-Valencia, Dr Andrew Higgins, Carol Stevens (PRG Member), Maurice Thomson(PRG Member), Tracy Sandberg (PRG Member)

Apologies –Ramesh Khetani, Deborah Padgett, Poonam Parmar, (5 non responders and 1 did not attend)

Introductions / CR started the meeting by thanking the PRG members for attending and such a poor night for bad weather.
GP’s were introduced to the members with a special introduction to our newest Partner Dr Jorge Alegria-Valencia who joined the Surgery on 1/3/15
(8 sessions).
Premises update / CR confirmed that planning permission had now been approved for the new build and that building work should start April 2015 with planned completion December 2015.
There was a discussion about which Pharmacy would be located in the new build and how this had gone to tender at NHS England.
To date we have been told that Living Care have won the bid but are still awaiting final confirmation.
Practice Mergers / The PRG Members were told that Moorcroft and Nursery Lane have been in discussions about a potential merger and the reasons behind this.
The reasons generally are:-

Better availability of GP’s
Better patient care due to larger scale
Potential extended hours – and/or lunchtime surgeries
Additional services/clinics
Same doctors therefore reduction in locums
Specialist clinics perhaps consultant led
NHS five year forward plan suggests mergers and better working with community to achieve economies of scale where funding is decreasing

The group were extremely positive about this and felt that it was the best way forward – in some cases were surprised that we would have been entering as two separate Practices.
The main concern was about continuity of care and being able to see their regular GP.
An assurance was given that the current GP’s at Moorcroft will be continuing to work within the new premises and pre bookable appointments will be available.
Plans to advertise this / We are still at a stage where we are in talks and until approval has been given by NHS England this is not definite – however we are hopeful that this is likely to happen
If we have the go ahead then the PRG suggested the following:-

Open evening for patients
On- line advertising
Newsletter
Mail shot to all patients
Text messaging

CR had written a FAQ’s which CS suggested needed to be a bit easier read and no jargon – so this will be re written and circulated for comment/approval / CR
The future of the PRG and nominated co-ordinator / All agreed that the turn out for the evening was poor – although terrible weather conditions - and that we need greater commitment and better communication about the Group and the work it does.
Previously we had agreed to promote this on a notice board in reception. To date this has not been done – however CR has now purchased a board and made a commitment to put this up by w/e 10/4/15
CS is involved in CCG work and has expressed an interest in co-ordinating future meetings, newsletters, communications etc. and other members felt this was a good idea – and CR would appreciate the help with this.
CS also mentioned a national PRG scheme that she would be interested in and will enquire if any costs etc. are involved.
We agreed that particularly at this time – with new premises and pending merger – we should encourage patients to be involved and have a push over the next few months at recruiting new members.
This will mainly be done by promotion in the waiting area and possible when queries arise about the changes ahead.
CS mentioned that a Terms of Reference would be a good idea for the PRG members – all agreed / CR/CS
Patient Satisfaction Surveys and Friends and Family Testing / The 2015 Survey results are in from IPSOS Morey
Overall Experience results are as follows:-
Very Good 60%
Fairly Good 34%
Neither good nor poor 4%
Fairly poor 2%
These are above average for NHS Leeds North Commissioning Group
The Friends and Family Surveys are going well.
The purpose of this is to identify if a patient would recommend us to a Friend or Family. We have commissioned the findings of the results through iWantgreatcare and to date we are ranked 4.5 out of 5 stars with 93 out 97 patients extremely likely/likely to recommend our Practice
Patient on-line / CR – spoke about patients now being able to access additional information about their medical record on-line – with a view to this being expanded further in the future
All agreed this was a good idea as it is their patient record
AOB / Next meeting TBC – Arrange to meet more regular to update on project