Patient Participation Group (PPG) Meeting Held at Stamford Bridge Health Care Centre: Thursday 12th May 2016, 6.00pm Present: Dr Lesley Welch, GP Partner Joanne Rowe, Managing Partner Debbie Westmoreland, Operations Manager Emily Broadbent, PA to Managing Partner Mr Allan Charlesworth Mr David Vaughan Mr Peter Sadler Mr Arthur Moore WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION Joanne welcomed the group to the meeting and expressed practice apologies for the lateness of the previous minutes. This was simply an error as we believed these had been circulated at an earlier date. Agreed a reminder of Mr Charlesworth’s e-mail address to be circulated to PPG members. Mr Charlesworth was also happy for this to be added to the practice website. Agreed the PPG needs to be patient driven/led, along with the PPG Action Plan. This should be areas of work that the PPG are able to help make a difference with e.g. DNA rates. It was queried what the practice sees as the biggest value/function of the PPG. Dr Welch explained that practices hugely value patient feedback in order to ensure patient needs are being met and a good quality of service being offered. The PPG are that link between the patients and the practice and give the wider patient population a voice. Queried whether all patients were written to when the PPG was first introduced. It was explained that this would have been extremely costly to the practice as no funding was provided for this, however, reception staff were extremely proactive in promoting the PPG to patients. It would also be difficult to promote the PPG by e-mail as this form of communication relies on patients keeping their details with us up to date.
Agreed that text message reminders would certainly help with some patients/demographic groups. A system to cancel appointments via SMS would also help. Debbie is currently talking to a company called ‘Mjog’ regarding SMS messaging and hopes to be able to share more information soon. Agreed that noticeboards are also a good outlet to help manage DNAs, however, the difficulty is that those who attend their appointments are the ones who read the noticeboard. Agreed that it would be useful to display this information month by month. Joanne to speak with staff member responsible for collating this type of data. CHANGES TO CLINICAL STAFF Very sadly, Dr Helen Chidlow will soon be leaving the practice and be moving on to pastures new. Dr Chidlow has been an integral part of the Partnership since 2007 but has now made the difficult decision to move to an area of medicine that she has had a particular interest in for some time. Dr Chidlow will leave us at the end of July, whilst a salaried GP will be starting with us at the beginning of June to cover these sessions. The beginning of June will also see a new Practice Nurse join us, as replacement for a retirement which took place earlier in the year. Practice Nurses are particularly few and far between at the moment meaning recruitment has proved a challenge. POTENTIAL CHANGES TO PRESCRIBING FOR OVER THE COUNTER MEDICATIONS This is a potential change proposed by the CCG as part of their current financial recovery plan and a proposed method of reducing outgoings. The CCG are currently focussed upon prescribing, and in particular Over The Counter (OTC) medications i.e. those which can be bought from pharmacies/shops without a prescription. The CCG are now advising that any medication which can be bought OTC should not be prescribed by a GP. Dr Welch explained that she had felt some discomfort around this and had subsequently spoken with the GMC (General Medical Council) who advised that the role of a GP is to simply recommend and advise treatment options to a patient.