Patient Participation Group Meeting – 19 April 2017

Minutes

Present:Sandra Smith, Practice Manager. Sue Dorrington, Secretary. Katherine McClay, Patient Services Manager. Dr Chris Fryar.

Greg Yates – Chairperson.

Joy Verrier – Vice Chairperson.

Rob Beacham, Marian Fellows, Jane Bignell, Jenny Rivers, Hope Pugh.

Apologies: Karen Partington, June Byrne, Ian Gould, Alison Lee.

Greg welcomed Hope Pugh as new member. Hope had become aware of the PPG following the recent “meet and greet” sessions.

Election of Officers will take place at the next PPG meeting. Greg indicated that he would stand again as Chairperson. Joy would like to step down as Vice Chairperson. Rob indicated that he would stand as Vice Chairperson. Greg informed the group that Ian has indicated that he will stand again as Secretary. If any members would like to be considered for any position please inform Sandra Smith before the next meeting.

1.Minutes

The minutes from the meeting of 25 January 2017 were approved.

2. Matters arising

  • Heath Lane Medical Centre has not had any contact from Clive at Boughton Health Centre.
  • Hope had a look at Heath Lane Medical Centre’s Facebook page and was impressed at the content.
  • A few PPG members had visited the new pharmacy and initial reports were favourable. The manager and staff in the pharmacy are all very approachable and the system seems to be working well.
  • Heath Lane Medical Centre reached 1% of signing patients up for online access to medical records which did not reach the target. We have reached 10% in signing patients up for booking appointments online.
  • The PhysioFirst programme is continuing and is working well. Patients do not have to see a GP or nurse to be seen by a physiotherapist in this triage service. It can be booked via the surgery or through the Extended Hours service at the Countess.

3. Heath Lane Medical Centre - Business Plan

Sandra explained that Heath Lane Medical Centre’s business plan was in its draft stage and is due to be signed off by the practice partners shortly. The business plan will then be made available to the PPG and will be emailed to members for discussion at the July PPG meeting.

4.Pharmacy Programme

The pharmacy ‘pilot’ programme is continuing for another year. Heath Lane Medical Centre’s medicines manager, Michelle, is working extremely hard on this and monetary savings are being made. This pilot programme started in November and Michelle hassaved the practice £16,917.07. This is excellent as Heath Lane Medical Centre are already very efficient prescribers in comparison to other practices.

5. Heath Lane Medical Centre - Staffing

Sandra explained that the Patient Services Supervisor had now left the practice and we have recently appointed a new Patient Services Team Leader. Her name is Karen Wood and she started at the practice on 3rdApril. Karen joins us from a practice in Wales and has ten years of experience in GP practice. We have a new IT manager which, once again, we will share with Boughton. His name is Jonathan Evans and he will be starting at the end of May.

6. eConsult

This is an online tool for patients with non-urgent issues which will ‘go live’ during the first week of May 2017.

  • The patient will enter their symptoms
  • There will be self-help guides and videos
  • There will be signposting
  • If the patient needs urgent advice a form will be completed and someone from NHS111 will call the patient back.
  • If a patient follows the instructions and are then advised to contact their GP there is a form to be completed which is then submitted to the patients’ GP practice. This is received by the practice as an email. The enquiry will then be dealt with by a relevant person within forty-eight hours. This is not necessarily going to be a GP.

It is hoped that this will improve access, reduce workload and lead to greater efficiency. There will be lots of publicity regarding this scheme and staff will receiving full training.

7. More Life

This scheme replaces a previous scheme called Why Weight?. This is working towards self-help for patients. Patients do not need to see a GP or nurse to be referred to this scheme. Patients can self-refer. Patients may be able to access reduced fees for attending a gym. There are weekly meetings which are free. Katherine indicated that the person in charge of promoting this new scheme has agreed to hold meetings at Heath Lane Medical Centre but she would need at least ten people to sign up for this to be viable. Katherine will contact Ian with information.

8.Macmillan – Brio Lesiure

There are currently walks taking place for people with cancer or their friends and family. They are currently up-and-running in Chester, Ellesmere Port, Frodsham and Neston. Katherine will contact Ian with information.

Representatives from both of the above schemes would be very interested in meeting with Heath Lane Medical Centre’s PPG.

9. Health Monitor

Heath Lane Medical Centre have a Health Monitor on trial. This is located in the Community Hub. This measures height, weight, blood pressure, BMI and body mass fat. There is some concern about the blood pressure measurements and the practice will look into making sure the machine is accurate. Potentially this could free-up nurse appointment time as the measurements taken make up part of many annual reviews.

10. Chairperson’s Meeting

Pam Smith has been appointed again by the CCG for another four years in this part-time position of Patient Liaison Representative. Greg explained that there is a meeting next week but the Group had yet to receive an agenda.He hoped thatseveral members from Heath Lane Medical Centre’s PPG will nevertheless be attending the meeting. Greg had made suggestions about a different format for these meetings, to introduce PPG members to the same topics as the Chairs only meetings, but this had not been agreed by the organisers.

11. Meet and Greet Workshop

Rob talked about the recent ‘meet and greet’ that PPG members carried out in Heath Lane Medical Centre’s waiting room. He explained that generally, no-one looks at the notices/newletters/TV screen that are located in the waiting room, or the web site. Most people only come to the surgery when they are ill and this impacts on being able to impart general information about health or developments at the surgery because they are focused on their immediate visit. The consensus was that patients weren’t too interested in the EPS system. The view was that most patients thought that the online appointment system was ok but would like to be able to book nurse appointments. Sandra explained why the surgeryare unable to facilitate this. The view was also taken that most patients did not know about the Out of Hours and Extended Hours Services. There were good comments from patients regarding the surgery/medical services generally, and the Advanced Nurse Practitioners seemed to be appreciated. Another ‘meet and greet’ session is possibly scheduled totake place in the Autumn.

12. AOB

It was noted that the new format of Heath Lane Medical Centre’s newsletter was very good. Comments would be passed to Paige for doing this. It was noted that it would be a good idea for the newsletter to be available in a larger, simpler font as many people find small ‘fancy’ fonts hard to read.

More thought is needed regarding engaging young parents to join the PPG. An idea was discussed that the surgery have a baby immunisation clinic every Wednesday afternoon therefore there would be many mothers/fathers with young children that would be attending the surgery on this day. PPG members could attend on an afternoon to talk to patients about the PPG, in a one-off type of “meet and greet” session.

Date of next Heath Lane PPG meeting:

26 July 2017

5:00 – 6:30pm

Heath Lane Medical Centre Meeting Room

Informal pre-meeting of just PPG at 4:00 pm