Patient Participation Group Meeting Minutes – October 2024
PPG MEETING MINUTES
Communication shared in the absence of a meeting.
Chair- Lorna English- circulated minutes to all the PPG.
Recruitment Updates: Dr Alex who was previously a registrar at the surgery has now passed all his exams and joined us as a salaried GP back In October. Dr Alex is an asset to the practice, and he has received nothing but compliments from the patients.
Kevin our HCA has returned from long term sickness, and we are thrilled to have him back in clinic.
We are currently in the process of recruiting a full-time receptionist to join our ever-expanding team as the workload increases. So far, we have interviewed 5 candidates and have some further interviews booked in next week. I will keep you updated of any developments.
Apprenticeship Scheme: In addition to recruiting a full- time receptionist we have appointed an apprentice Rebecca who will be joining us on Monday 18th November. Rebecca will work full time alongside completing assignments and will be trained in all elements of the reception role. Our experienced receptionist Heather will be acting as Rebecca’s mentor to ensure that she has support during her time at the practice.
Telephone Systems Update: We have FINALLY gone live with the new telephones system. This took place last Thursday afternoon 31.10.24. We have experienced some teething problems which is to be expected when we have new systems but hopefully most of these have not impacted patients. We are in the process of recorded new voice messages as the lady at the moment sounds a little robotic! We are considering one of the GP partners (Dr Sidaway) recording this to ensure that patients expectations are being managed from the offset, particularly when it comes to the reception team triaging all patients.
Flu clinics: A MASSIVE MASSIVE Thank you to all of you that helped at the flu clinics- we could not have done it without you! I have a few bits to hand over to you at the next meeting as a token of our appreciation Patient feedback was absolutely fantastic, and all of the mornings ran perfectly. From the Saturday clinics alone in 2 weeks we managed to vaccinate over 1700 patients. Beverley who has worked here 10 years and says we have never managed to achieve those figures in such a
short space of time and with such excellent feedback. I will have the total figures for you for December’s meet.
Repeat Prescriptions: It has been brought to my attention that Rowlands pharmacy (and possibly oakwood too?) have been experiencing significant delays in dispensing patient’s medication. In reaction to this our clinical pharmacist, Brigitte, and our experienced prescription clerk Nicola will be looking to this and have proposed a meeting with both pharmacies so that we can better improve patient communication. Brigitte seems to think that the length of time we are talking (10 days) may be in breach of current guidance. Leave it with us and I will keep you in the loop with any developments. Thank you to John for bringing this to our attention.
Chair? I am conscious that we have still not assigned a chair for the meetings- whilst I am happy to do I feel that it may be more appropriate for a member of the team to do this. Lesley has said that she is happy to do if everyone is in favour- we can discuss in the December meet.
GPIP project The practice have signed up for a GPIP project- this is a 6 month project that is lead by an advisor and a group of clinical and non-clinical staff. During the sessions we map workflow and look at ways that the practice can improve the way that we are doing things to save time and to work more efficiently for our patients. For example, next Thursday we have a meeting with the coding and scanning team alongside one of the partners. Currently the coding and scanning of documents is done separately and the letters are passed from pillar to post; we are going to focus on how we can streamline this process by training the staff to complete both the coding and the scanning at the same time. Staff are also visiting other practices to work closely with them to see how we can all share our processes to improve them. I will bring any developments from the project to our meeting.
Next Proposed meeting Is Thursday 19th December at 13:00 (scary that December is so close!) Please do let me know if you have any issue with the date, or anything that you wish to add to the agenda.
Thank you again for your understanding.