Author: Administrator
Company: NHS North of Tyne

DENTON PARK MEDICAL GROUP

Patient Participation Group

Report 2013 -2014

Meeting held on Monday 24^th February 2014

Present: Dr Susan Owens - Partner
              Sister Christine Mernin – Nurse Practitioner
              Diane Wallace – Practice Manager
              Lisa Nattrass – Reception Manager
	   Caron Bowey – Phlebotomist/ Receptionist	
              Patient Participation Group Members x 6

Virtual members x 5

Denton Park Medical Group has had a long standing Patient Participation Group since 2006 and 2 years ago introduced a virtual group and keep a register of membership.

We have actively encouraged further members to join the group by way of posters and leaflets in our waiting area and on the reception desk, Practice website, TV screens in our waiting area and also inserts into mail shots we have sent out from the practice for various health promotion campaigns. Also messages on the side of repeat prescriptions and opportunistically verbal invitations to ensure that the group is representative of its registered patients. 

At present we have approximately 20 members all registered patients of the practice made up of male and female with an age range of 23 – 72 years of age and who are either employed, un-employed, retired, staying at home to look after family and unable to work due to ill health also including patients with special requirements or disabilities, patients who are carers of other patients with chronic diseases. We have a high population of patients with chronics diseases and some of our group members represent these groups. We are keen to improve the uptake and we are constantly looking in to other ways of recruiting more volunteers to try and balance the profile of the practice by encouraging the very small coterie of ethnic minority patients to attend the group.

We contacted our PPG members in October 2013 by letter and email and invited the group to either attend a meeting at the practice on 4.11.13 or give input via email asking them which areas they felt we should prioritise in our annual patient survey. 

The group met on 4.11.13 to discuss the content of the survey. The survey draft was drawn up and the group were able to see this before it was handed out to the patients. 

The Practice conducted the survey in January 2014 over a 2 week period.
200 surveys were handed out in surgery with a return of 200. The data was collected and analysed in house and discussed within the team and then a copy was posted or emailed out to the group members and then it was discussed with the PPG at the annual meeting held at the Practice on 24.2.14
Along with the feedback from the virtual group.

Generally patients found it easy to get an appointment with any GP but less so with a specific GP. The group thought maybe the ringing on the day system may be an obstacle to this as they didn’t feel this is a problem personally. Some of the group are registered to book online and find this much easier to book their own appointments, and the results show that only 3% of patients who completed the survey booked appointments on line therefore if the practice could encourage more patents to book this way they may not find it as such a problem.

A high percentage of patients were aware of the Nurse Practitioner and this service was working well.

ACTION: Make patients more aware of online booking by displaying in reception on notice boards– step by step guides. And offer a short demonstration from the receptionist on how to use online facilities.

ACTION: encourage younger people to engage more with the group.

The survey showed high levels of patient satisfaction with respect of quality of consultations and the group including the virtual group felt that we should feedback to our patients on how well the practice is doing using poster displays and suggestion boxes in reception to promote the positive feed back and collect any feedback from patients who may not have had such a good experience. The group discussed the possibility of having some kind of virtual forum for patients, we will look into this.

ACTION: Notice boards in reception to display the PPG and the work done along with Results of survey and encourage feedback and the ways in which feedback can be given.

We asked our patients if they looked after or gave support to anyone or would consider themselves as a carer, only 14% said yes and 78% of that 14% said they had discussed this with their GP. These are very low numbers as recent data from carer’s centre Newcastle shows otherwise. Caring for someone can have an effect on your own health and wellbeing and Newcastle carers centre can provide support to carers.

ACTION: Clinicians will be more proactive on collecting this information and referring carers for help and support if necessary.
Carers Newcastle information to be displayed clearly in waiting area.

Management: responsibility for overseeing this action plan is Diane Wallace Practice Manager. The PPG will meet quarterly and review actions and look at ways to improve the service.

Diane Wallace