Minutes of the Meeting of the Spilsby Surgery Patient Participation Group

Wednesday 14 January 2015 at 7 pm – The Grange, Ashby by Partney

Present: Dorothy Dobson (Chair), Jeanette Amaral, Enid Bailey, Stephanie Wroe, Julie Rajput, Jason Longstaff

1. Apologies
Suzy Sheldon, Sian Lovett, Ken Wroe, Cristina Holmes

2. The minutes of the previous meeting were agreed and signed.

3. Matters Arising
Patient Engagement – Virtual Members
The update from Jason was that the Surgery’s IT technician was creating a logon so that committee members could log onto the site and communicate with virtual members. Jeanette asked if this could be expedited as soon as possible. The IT technician would send the most recently ratified minutes to all the virtual members. Action Surgery

4. Triage System
Cristina had asked Jeanette to raise on her behalf the frustrations of hearing patients say that when feeling unwell they could not get an appointment to see anyone, despite there being a triage system in place and the fact that many patients were not aware of it. There was discussion around the triage system and the general feeling was that it worked very well. Jason mentioned that on the 5 January, the first day the surgery was open after new year, the duty doctor had 164 patient contacts through the triage system. Of those, there were very few who actually needed to be seen by a clinician. It was agreed that the problem, as ever, was around communication and education and Jason and Jeanette said they would put together the next PPG newsletter based solely on this. Jason said he would ask Dr Howarth to write up a short process flowchart for patients to support this. Action Jeanette and Jason
There was a further discussion around the A&Es being swamped over Christmas and New Year some of which had been apportioned in the press to the 111 number misdirecting patients to A&E. It was noted that there didn’t seem to be any current NHS campaigns or information around this.
Jason also said that the Surgery was looking into putting together some self help leaflets for patients on minor illnesses.

5. NRS National Care Service
As Cristina had not been able to attend today, this item would be deferred to the next meeting.

6. Surgery Update
Jason reported as follows:

•  Following the flu vaccinations in the latter part of last year the Surgery had only been left with around 20 vaccinations, which was good uptake
• There continued to be a trend of lower DNAs which was apportioned to the positive effect the text messaging was having. However, Julie mentioned that a patient who had been mortified for missing her appointment by confusing the time had received a not so positive response from the receptionist. Jason said he would check on this.
•  Apart from the 164 patient contacts on 5 January the Surgery had been fairly quiet for this time of year
• The building works continued and should be completed between 15-22 February. The waiting room TV would be going back up and the PPG noticeboard would also be put back up.
• There would be new contract cleaning staff from February. The Surgery had been let down by its current cleaners which had resulted in staff having to clean the surgery at the end of their shifts

Once again the committee wished to pass on its thanks to all the Surgery staff for the excellent service received by patients throughout the building works.

7. Consortium Update
Dorothy reported that at its meeting in January they had hoped to have had the ELDC planners attending to talk about the impact of housing development on the Surgery, but this had not been possible.

8 Any Other Business
There was no other business.

Next Meeting
2nd Wednesday of March 2015. No February meeting.