New Street Surgery

New Street Surgery

Patient Participation

Directed Enhanced Service

Report

Year 2 Report

2013

Introduction

The Patient Participation DES is to ensure that patients are involved in decisions about the range and quality of services provided and over time, commissioned by their practice. It aims to encourage and reward practices for routinely asking for and acting on views of their patients.

This includes patients being involved in decisions that lead to changes to the services their practice provides or commissions either directly or in its capacity as gatekeeper to other services.

The DES aims to promote the proactive engagement of patients through the use of effective Patient Reference Groups (PRGs) and to seek views from the practice patients through the use of a local practice survey.

1. Establishing and recruitment of our PRG Group

We advertised that we were setting up a patient group by putting notices on the surgery notice board and by inviting patients who had shown an interest in a patient group previously.

We opportunistically invited all patients to attend and encouraged these patients to bring family and friends also registered with the practice with them to join the group.

We invited representation from our local Dementia home and we also approached young people with young families as well as employed and unemployed people with different ethnic backgrounds.

We always make a special effort to invite all patients that may have had reason to complain throughout the year to come to meetings to discuss their concerns regarding services provided. We also have a PRG section on our website at

Our group has now completed a second year of meetings and we have had continued support. We have held meetings in the daytime as well as in the evenings to attract any people who are at work during the day. Daytime meetings appear to be best supported by our patients as the evening meetings haven’t really attracted any new members. We encourage our PRG members to add some invites or information on the practice newsletter to raise awareness of the group.

Most members of the group who attend regularly have been in the group from the beginning and they continue to help and support the practice.

2) Priorities and issues

The patient group continues to be well supported and some of the group have attended patient summits held by the local clinical commissioning groups in order to pass on their views with regards to their expectations for the new era of GP commissioning.

Our meetings have had some discussion around GP commissioning and some of the patients are quite keen to get involved with the patient representation on the Local CCG (clinical commissioning group).

One of our patients after discussion with the group has now started a newsletter for the practice which will be available to all of our practice population on a quarterly basis. The practice is very appreciative to the patient group for setting this up and it is another way of showing just how valuable the patient group has become to New Street Surgery.

Over the course of a couple of meetings we discussed questions that could be used in our patient survey for 2013 making sure that we could use our previous years survey as a benchmark to see if we had improved in anyway.

The survey was carried out in surgery in February/March 2013 over two weeks and was distributed to patients in surgery with the help of volunteers from our patient group.

A sample of the patient questionnaire can be found in Appendix 1

3) Patient Survey

The survey was carried out in surgery with random patients over 2 weeks from February/March 2013 by volunteers from our patient group. This ensured the survey was carried out independent of any influence or involvement from the practice.

The survey once completed, was forwarded to Sandwell PCT patient and public involvement team who analysed the questionnaires and collated and produced the final survey results for the practice. This was another way to ensure independence from surgery influence or involvement.

(Appendix 2 & 3).

The final report was received by the practice on 11th March 2013.

4) Findings of the Survey

We held a meeting on 14.03.2013 with our patient group to discuss the results of the survey. The meeting was attended by 12 group members of the PRG.

Minutes from the meeting enclosed (Appendix 4)

In Summary

Majority of patient’s continue from last year to be happy with!

GP & Nurse

Receptionists

Opening Hours

Getting through to the surgery on the phone

Access to Appointments with the Practice Nurse

Majority of Patients were unhappy with!

Access to GP Appointments

61 Patients completed the Practice Survey

Gender:

24.1% who took part were Male

75.9% who took part were Female

Age group:

Between 16 - 75+

Ethnicity

Asian/Asian British (Indian) 17.5%

Asian /Asian British (Other) 3.5%

Black/Black British (African) 7.0%

Black/Black British (Caribbean) 3.5%

Mixed – White and Black Caribbean 5.3%

Mixed – White and Black African 1.8%

White British 61.4%

5) Action Plan

Minutes from the meeting enclosed (Appendix 4).

1. Access- To address the problem with access most patients felt that the telephone consultations introduced after last years survey should continue and possibly be increased if this could be accommodated by the practice. It was agreed that the practice would continue to add extra sessions where this was financially viable in times when there is extra pressure on the surgery to help to improve access further.
2. Telephone Consultations- It was also agreed by the group that when receptionists book a telephone consultation, that they do not give a specific time. It has been felt in the past that patients are allocated an appointment time and if the Gps are running late patients are getting anxious due to not receiving a telephone call when expected. Receptionists from now on will advise patients that they will receive a call from the GP either in the morning or afternoon rather than time specific, depending on when they have been booked into the surgery appointment list.
3. Newsletter – It was agreed that we would work with our patient representatives on the newsletter, to highlight care pathways on our next issue which will educate patients regarding alternative ways to manage their health other than attending the surgery or A&E etc thus helping to improve access.

Appendix 4

New Street Surgery

PRG Group Meeting

14.03.2013

Attendees: Mrs J Bull, Mr S Lowe, Mrs E Walters, Mr M Grant,

Mrs T Grant, Mrs A Johal, Mr J Ubhi, Mrs M Walters, Mrs C Guest, Miss C Burton, Mrs V Patel, Mrs B Hocknull.

Facilitators: Mrs C Scully & Ms A Morris.

1. Chris presented results from the patient survey and had a general discussion with the patients about the report highlighting good and less good areas on the survey.
2. General discussion took place regarding open answers in the survey.
3. Access was discussed. Improvements to access from the previous year were discussed and the patients agreed that we had done a lot of work from the previous year’s survey on trying to improve access. Action plan discussed as follows;

a) Continue with telephone consultations and possibly add more of these types of appointments into our daily allocation if at all possible.

b) Receptionists to only advise if Morning or afternoon telephone appointment and not time specific due to pressures on the Gp regarding calling at allocated times.

1. Practice Newsletter was discussed and Chris thanked the group and especially Mr Lowe for all of his hard work on the newsletter. We agreed as an addition to the action plan to do a piece of work on alternative pathways of care for our next newsletter publication.
2. Chris thanked those patients who had helped distribute the patient survey and to all members for their constant attendance at PRG meetings and support to the practice.
3. Mrs Vasu Patel discussed the benefit of exercise and demonstrated some exercises to the group. She also advised that she runs exercise classes and invited patients to join her groups. Some of the group already attend her classes and offered excellent testimonials.
4. AOB. Updated discussion regarding Gp on Maternity and long term locum cover. Discussed reduction in A&E attendance from our practice which is possibly due to more appointments offered in surgery alongside patient education. Mr Lowe wanted to thank the practice for the work done on improving access to date and was fully supportive of the telephone consultations and of the surgery in general.

Next Meeting: Date to be agreed.