Patient Participation Group Meeting Minutes – 11/04/24

31st March 202531st March 2025

PPG Minutes

Thursday 11th April 2024

Date:11.4.24

Attendees: Peter s, Peter B, Norman W, John S, Marilyn B, Lesley W, Alan N

Apologies: Andrew H

Chair: Lorna English

Start Time: 1pm

End Time: 2pm

Minutes of last Meeting

· Copies of these were handed out to all attendees

Recruitment Update (clinical and non-clinical)

· Dr Ho, Salaried GP – Wednesday, Thursday and Friday

· Two dressing nurses joining the practice from Friday.

· Reception supervisors have been interviewed to allow Lorna further admin time.

· 7.30am starts for reception team, to work through sickness and deal with urgent queries.

Pharmacy 1st

· Receptionist are triaging to the new pharmacy 1st with patients, we are referring to our local pharmacies, 7 items that we are triaging for, Shingles, Impetigo, Infected insect bites, ear infection, Sore throats, Sinusitis, UTI. This is a national thing we need to do; this will also relieve appointments. Patients don’t need a referral into this service, they can just turn up at the pharmacy with the above elements.

· We were going to ask for help with marketing and additional information for patients through the CCG

· MSK appointments – We are going to investigate being able to book online with Soliman.

Accurx

· Is a way of triaging which isn’t over the phone, you can submit a medical or non- medical request. You go through the questions online to make your request. These are triaged each morning. At the minute we are only offering this 8-9am to submit your request and we allow 10 of these to come through. The message that the patient will receive back, that this request will be dealt with within 24 hours. We are hoping that this frees up the phoneline. The new phone system comes in early in May, that we can open further slots. We need to a make sure staff are fully trained for this and that patients are finding this easy to use.

· If you hear any feedback from patient, could you please let Lorna know.

· You can find this on our website on the online services, you don’t need to be signed up for systmone online to use this.

· Carers/family/friend can request this for other people

· Concerns about fraudulent people accessing records and requests, Lorna made it clear that this will link to the patients’ records, and flags will be on the front-page re-safeguarding etc.

Phone System

· Ruth has done quite a lot of work about the new phone system; they came in on the 8th of March and they are due early May. We are hoping this will bring everything together. The new phone system will open the patient record straight away. All members of staff will be able to then take calls. Throughout the day, phone call will be monitoring and staff will be asked to help to reduce these calls.

Clinical Rooms/ The Building

· Holly is now back in her office, the general office staff have now gone, we have now gained clinical rooms, we have received money to take on these extra rooms.

Accessing Appointments

· Concerns about Elderly patients standing outside the surgery waiting for appointments. How us a society are we going to deal with this issue. The new pharmacy first and ACCURX are going to be there to help this. If patients don’t have access to a computer or phone, this is then an issue. This is food for thought about how we can deal with this as a wider problem. There is sometimes a disconnect between primary and secondary care, when it comes to following up appointments. We would only receive a discharge summary; we would only be aware of the situation that is mentioned in this summary.

· Do we need to educate secondary care about the social prescribers? Do district nurses raise concerns about patients not answering the door to patient, it was said that they do flag it, if they can’t get entrance.

· Virtual wards are now being put in place with the hospital, which may also be causing issues with dressing etc.

· Appointments for systmone online have now changed to 8.20am, we are going to promote this change.

· Patients are saying the phonelines are very good, and they are finding that phoning isn’t taking long.

· Long-term condition reviews – The recall team, should still be contacting patient to book in for these. Issue with Diabetic reviews, as a couple of people haven’t been contacted about these. We are hoping with the new dressing nurses that this will allow for more time to be able to book these reviews.

· Results can be seen on the app

Next meet Thursday 13th June 2024