Patient Participation Group- Report 2013/14

The practice implemented the Patient Participation Group in 2011 to involve our patients in decisions and quality of services that we provide as a Practice.

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Profile of members of the Patient Participation group

The current number of members within the group is seven. We publish minutes of the meetings and survey results on our practice website that patients are able to access. We have a form for topics that patients can complete if there are items that a patient requests to be discussed at the patient participation group meetings; the patient will then receive feedback from the practice.
The patient participation group is a cross section of patients, with different age ranges and from different employment backgrounds.

Agree areas of priority with PPG for planned practice changes

Areas that were identified to be discussed as priority were the changes within Primary care with the disbanding of the PCT and the formation of Rotherham CCG, NHS England, Rotherham Borough Council and Public Health departments involvement in the NHS.  
Care Quality Commission inspections, Care data, Patient on-line access and forward planning of the practice.
Following last year’s survey that was done on the nursing team, members of the PPG highlighted a few aspects that patients had commented on. One of these areas was regarding Receptionists and their approachability.
Following discussions we created and agreed as a group a patient survey, for this year.

Collate patient views through the use of a survey

We had survey equipment within our waiting area of the practice from 22nd October 2013 to 28th November 2013. Members of the group volunteered to assist with this survey by using the portable equipment and speaking to patients. The survey which is attached contained 8 questions in total.
224 patients participated with the survey at Rawmarsh and gave their comments, unfortunately we only had 21 patients participate at Thorpe Hesley as we had technical problems with the equipment, also we operate a Triage system at Thorpe Hesley for 3 mornings a week, therefore patients are not attending surgery. It was felt that there were insufficient number of results, we feel we may have to repeat this again later.
Helen Wyatt from Rotherham CCG collated the data and produced the survey results for us.
Discussions regarding the results took place at our meeting on Friday 31st January 2014.

The survey results can be found on the practice website.
www.highstsurgery.co.uk

Provide PPG with the opportunity to discuss the survey finding and reach an agreement with the PPG on changes to services

The practice forwarded a copy of the survey results/ graphs to all members of the group prior to the meeting on Friday 31st January 2014.
The survey results were discussed and feedback was received from the group.
The PPG felt that on discussions of the findings we do not particularly have any problems.
We discussed the areas that patients had entered free text in and we are looking at covering this in our Practice Learning Training Events.
One of the areas which were discussed was people saying they could not get appointments, we discussed this and we found it was not so much people cannot get appointments as patients cannot get them when they want them-Patient on-line access has been introduced to hopefully deal with some of these matters.
One of the questions we asked on the survey was whether patients would recommend us to Family and Friend’s?
We had 86% say that they would, we received 55 responses in free text that we are looking into, going forward.

Agree an action plan with the PPG and seek PPG agreement to implementing changes.

The Practice has implemented Patient-on line access for appointments and repeat prescriptions etc.
We are looking to implement SMS text messaging in the near future. The Practice unfortunately has still been unable to implement the Dr. Triage system at Rawmarsh due to GP shortages. However we are still looking to implement this in the near future. 

Information regarding speaking to Drs. and Nurses is displayed more noticeably so all patients are aware of how they can speak to a GP between 11.30am and 12.00pm and they can speak to a Nurse between12.30pm-1.00pm.

Publicise Actions taken and subsequent achievements

Information is available on the practice website www.highstsurgery.co.uk. and the Practice notice board.
All members of the Patient participation group will be sent a copy of the report.
A copy of the report will be placed in the waiting room.

Details of the Practice opening hours and how patients can access services during core hours.

Patients can access the surgery premises at our Rawmarsh surgery from 7.00am -6.00pm on a Monday, Thursday and Friday
By telephone at our Rawmarsh surgery from 8.00am -6.30pm (Core hours)
Patients can access the surgery premises and by telephone at our Thorpe Hesley surgery from 8.30am-6.00pm. Thursday 7.00am -12.00pm

The surgery offers extended hours pre-bookable appointments with a GP from 7.00am-8.00am on a Monday, Thursday and Friday at our Rawmarsh surgery and on Thursday from 7.00am at our Thorpe Hesley surgery.