Patient Participation Group Meeting – 25 January 2017

Minutes

Present:Sandra Smith, Practice Manager. Linda Bennett, Business Manager. Sue Dorrington, Secretary. Katherine McClay, Patient Services Manager

Greg Yates – Chairperson.

Joy Verrier – Vice Chairperson.

Rob Beacham, Marian Fellows, Alison Lee, Ian Gould, June Byrne, Jane Bignell, Jenny Rivers, Olivia Wood, Vivien Russell.

Apologies: Dominika Sadczuk, Karen Partington

Greg and the Group welcomed Viv and Jenny to the Patient Participation Group, and congratulated Sandra and Katherine for their appointments to Practice Manager and Patient Services Manager respectively.

Greg announced Linda’s retirement to the Group. Greg thanked Linda for her help and dedication to the PPG since its inception and her major contribution to the operation and development of the Practice over the past eleven years. Greg presented gifts to Linda.

Linda expressed her thanks to the Group adding that the PPG were an asset to the practice.

1.Minutes

The minutes from the meeting of 26 October 2016 were approved.

2. Matters arising

  • Huntington Parish Council have a link to Heath Lane Medical Centre’s PPG on their website
  • A representative from Boughton Health Centre’s PPG has not yet been to view Heath Lane Medical Centre and Sandra has not been contacted about this. The representative wished to visit Heath Lane Medical Centre ‘incognito’ but the surgery would prefer to be informed of any upcoming visit.
  • Heath Lane Medical Centre’s Facebook page is up and running. Heath Lane Medical Centre’s IT Manager, Mr John Stockton, is overseeing this. Patients can Google Heath Lane Medical Centre and the surgery Facebook page will appear in the search. It is set up as a business page therefore comments cannot be left on the page. Olivia explained how the Facebook page works.
  • There have been numerous reports in the press regarding the closure of the Countess of Chester Hospital. Viv explained that the reports should be ignored and the Countess of Chester Hospital is not closing.
  • The Well-Being Co-ordinator service will be continuing. The Co-ordinator is a good asset to the practice.

3. Heath Lane Medical Centre Pharmacy

Nada Baki from the Hub Pharmacy attended to address the PPG regarding the new pharmacy. He explained that he is the Superintendent Pharmacist for Hub Pharmacies. The company is based in the North of England with the Head Office based in Skelmersdale. They currently have twenty-one branches covering the North of England. Their motto is “Pharmacy in with and for your community” with the focus on a high level of customer service. Nada explained that the pharmacy will be called Heath Lane Medical Centre Pharmacy. He explained that the pharmacy is not at the point they would like at the moment and took on board that there were a few glitches. A refit will take place shortly. There will be a designated waiting area and also a consulting room. This will aid the pharmacist to be able to consult with patients regarding issues that can be dealt with without the need for a GP appointment. A hard copy of the refit plans was shared with the Group. The pharmacy will remain open during the refit. Most of the work will take place at the weekend and in the evenings. Nada explained that they will be recruiting more staff. A new manager has been appointed by the name of Ian Thomason. He will start in this role on 6 February 2017. Katherine raised a question that she had been told by a staff member that they cannot see where a prescription has come from on the new system. Nada says this is incorrect and will investigate. Currently, the pharmacy closes for 75 minutes over the lunchtime period. This will be reviewed in due course.

4.PPG ‘Meet and Greet’

Rob will be spearheading the PPG’s next “meet and greet/survey” campaign. Sandra explained that it would be very helpful to the practice if the “meet and greet” could centre around a target that the practice needs to reach before the end of March. Heath Lane Medical Centre must sign up 10% of our patients for online access. Sandra explained that we have two different systems running at Heath Lane Medical Centre. We have a clinical system for patient notes called EmisWeb and a different system for scheduling appointments called Frontdesk. Patient access is run through EmisWeb. We have to prove to the CCG that we can get at least 10% of patients to access online services. The patient will need to have two forms of identification to be able to sign up for this. The application is forwarded to the GP for approval as there are certain patients that would not benefit from viewing their medical records. There is an application form to give to patients which are located at the Patient Services desk.

5. WiFi – Community Hub

A comment was made that it would be helpful to have a computer in the Community Hub. Sandra explained that we cannot have a computer in a public area due to security. In the future it may be possible when our WiFi is upgraded and becomes secure.

6. Heath Lane Medical Centre from the perspective of a young person

Olivia had looked around the waiting room and generally felt that it was very good. The only issue was that the leaflets that are displayed are all aimed at a specific age group. There are no leaflets aimed at a younger person. Katherine explained that we are no longer provided with leaflets. Most services have an online page and patients are directed towards this avenue. Katherine will investigate if it is possible to get some mental health/anxiety/stress leaflets to display. Olivia also explained that a friend had recently joined Heath Lane Medical Centre and came to see one of our GPs with anxiety. Her friend’s experience was very positive; friendly Patient Services Receptionist and good consultation with the GP. Olivia felt that the team are all very friendly and helpful.

7. Extended Hours

Extended Hours have developed their services. They now offer phlebotomy and Physio First alongside routine appointments and patients can also now be booked follow-up appointments with the Well Being Co-ordinator. Appointments with Extended Hours Service can now be booked via the Surgery.

8.Business Plan

Sandra explained that to come in line with other practices Heath Lane Medical Centre’s business plan will now run from April to March instead of January to January. Therefore there will be a new plan in April. The Draft will be circulated to the PPG with the agenda for the next meeting in April, for their consideration.

9. Staffing Update

Sandra explained that there have been some changes to staffing. The Patient Services Supervisor has left the practice. The practice is currently advertising for a Patient Services Team Leader. A new apprentice has been appointed called Hannah. The practice has a new IT Manager called John Stockton. Sandra has now been appointed to the Practice Manager role and Katherine is Patient Services Manager.

10. Pharmacy Pilot

Medicines Manager, Michelle, is currently working on the pharmacy pilot. All practices are monitoring requests from pharmacies. All requests of five items or more are being checked by Michelle. She is trying to identify if the patient actually requires the medication that is being ordered on their behalf by the pharmacy. This pilot started in November and Michelle has already saved the practice £3,866.45. This is excellent as Heath Lane Medical Centre are already very efficient prescribers in comparison to other practices. The collated information will be fed back to pharmacies.

11. PPG Workshop

The next PPG workshop will take place on 26 April 2017 – time to be confirmed. Feedback regarding the last workshop was given in the PPG pre-meeting. It was felt that although Heath Lane PPG members continued to support these workshops, other practices’ members were attending less and less, perhaps because they seemed to be less interesting. Nevertheless, the topics which had been discussed at the PPG chairs meeting were felt to be interesting and it was suggested that the two forms of meeting should be combined. Greg would feed this back to the organisers.

12. AOB

The pharmacy are going to fund a new Heath Lane Medical Centre sign which is located at the end of the carpark heading onto Heath Lane.

More thought is needed regarding engaging young parents to join the PPG.

Date of next Heath Lane PPG meeting:

Wed 19 April 2017

5:00 – 6:30pm

Heath Lane Medical Centre Meeting Room

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