Moorfield House Surgery

Patient Reference Group (PRG)

Minutes of Meeting held on Wednesday 26 September 2012

Present:Alison IngsCarol Garforth

George Nicholson Geoff Bowes

Judith Parsons (Chair)Dr Jonathan Taylor(GP)

David WalkerGill Donaldson (Practice Manager)

Rosalind Walker Frances Ingram

Bob McDonald

Margaret McDonald

1 / Welcome
Judith welcomed everyone to the meeting and outlined the agenda and what the meeting would be focusing on.
2 / General Update
  • New clinical system – go live date 25.07.2012 - Gill updated the meeting on the new clinical system that had been installed during the summer. We were not due to upgrade until March 2012, but due to various reasons our installation was brought forward. This has been a big project to manage, and has had an impact on our planned workload.
  • Care Quality Commission (CQC) – all medical practices in England and Wales have got to register with the CQC by April 2012. The CQC requires that we meet 28 different standards (16 of these essential) around premises, staffing, patient care, patient involvement, infection control and safeguarding. If we meet all the standards we will be awarded a license to operate as a medical practice. There is a lot of work involved ensuring that we meet these standards, and the practice will be working towards this registration over the next couple of months. We need to submit our registration by the middle of December.

2 / Update on Action Plan from the 2011-12 Patient Survey
Gill talked through the action plan.
  • Parking – no further action has been done on this area due to the new clinical system. The timescales for this will be moved to 31 December 2012

  • Early and late appointment to accommodate people who work – From 1 April 2012, the afternoon GP clinics have been split – one starting at 2pm until 4pm and the other starting at 4pm until 6pm. We have seen a positive effect of this change, as those patients who do not work tend to access the earlier clinic appointments.

  • Problems accessing upstairs consulting rooms – receptionists will continue to ask patients who have accessibility problems if they wish to see a doctor downstairs. We also mark up patients records if they prefer to see a patient downstairs, so that we can prepare in advance of the patient arriving.

  • Acoustics/confidentiality in upstairs waiting area – the layout of the waiting room has been changed slightly. However, due to space restrictions there is very little we can do in this area.

  • The TV Channel – due to the new clinical system, no further work has been done on this. However, the programmes are regularly changed now on the TV Channel. Timescale moved to 31 December 2012

  • More availability to see a female doctor – from 1 April 2012, Dr Devany has added an additional clinic on Friday mornings.

  • Newsletter – due to the new clinical system, it was not possible to produce a newsletter for the summer. It is hoped that we can produce a newsletter in time for Christmas 2012.

3 / Patient Survey 2012
The main focus of the meeting was to discuss the content of the Patient Survey for 2012.
Due to limited timescales, the patient survey we undertook was basic but effective, and we got some good feedback about our service.
Discussion took place about getting the survey out to patients who don’t regularly attend the surgery, as well as those who do. The survey will be available to complete on line.
Some of the suggestions were:
  • Survey available to all patients who attend the surgery during a three week period in January
  • Identifying patients who have not been to the surgery for 3-6 months and inviting them to complete the survey on line.
We have more time this year to look at the questions we want to ask under the following headings.
  • Accessing your GP Services
  • Making an appointment
  • Waiting times
  • Your last appointment
  • Opening Hours
  • Overall Experience
A discussion took place about the type of questions which could be included under each heading.
It was agreed that a draft questionnaire would be sent out to all members of the PRG asking for their views/comments with a deadline of Monday 11 November 2012 for members to return their views/comments.
Next Meeting
Discussion took place as to whether another PRG meeting needed to be arranged to discuss the comments made by members. It was agreed, that the Judith Parsons, Gill and Dr Taylor would meet in the first instance to discuss this and if they felt that another meeting needed to be called, this would then be done.
A PRG meeting would be called in February 2013 to look at the results of the patient survey and put together the action plan for 2013-14.
A suggested dated for the meeting in February 2013 would be Wednesday 27 February 2012