Practice Report on
Patient Participation Scheme 2011 to 2013
The Practice is participating in a two year project to collate information and feedback from our patients. Our very successful Patient Participation Group (PPG) has overseen this survey and its results.
All of our patients are welcome to give feedback via this group and therefore we consider you to all be members of the PPG already. The PPG meets about once every four to eight weeks at the practice. The results of the surveys are shared with all of our patients using a variety of media including our practice website, newsletters and email updates.
The Patient Participation Group is a committee of patients who meet at the practice regularly to support the practice with patient communication, service development and to collate and interpret PPG feedback and play an active part in survey design and results. All patients are welcome to attend any of our meetings. We welcome as many patients as possible who wish to join either of our groups.
To express an interest in our patient participation group and meet periodically at the practice, please contact the practice manager or leave your details and we will pass them to the Chair of the PPG who will be in touch, or follow the link on our web page at
The information gathered will be shared and the questions formulated with input from our PPG throughout this exercise.
Year 1 / Date achieved / Date plannedStep 1 / Establishment of a Patient Participation Group (PPG) / PPG has been established for many years
Step 2 / Agreement of areas of priority with PPG through meetings with PPG members, GP’s and staff. / September 2012
Step 3 / Survey agreed and posted to website, given out at Flu clinic, reception and emailed to patients. / October 2012
Step 4 / Results of survey discussed with PPG, GP’s and staff / January 2012
Step 5 / Action plan agreed with PPG, GP’s and staff and agree changes / March 2012
Step 6 / Report publicised and copy sent to PCT / March 2012
Year 2
Step 1 / Agreement of areas of priority with PPG through meetings with PPG members, GP’s and staff. / July 2012
Step 2 / Survey agreed and posted to website, given out at Flu clinic, reception and emailed to patients. / August 2012
Step 3 / Results of survey discussed with PPG, GP’s and staff / September 2012
Step 4 / Action plan agreed with PPG, GP’s and staff and agree changes / October 2012
Step 5 / Report publicised and copy sent to PCT / March 2013
The Practice has had a website in place for some time at and has a dedicated Patient Participation section, detailing the results of our first PPG Survey.
- The PPG is well established within the practice. We have around 10 patient members who meet regularly. Members have ranged in age from 36 to 80years old with a 50% split of men to women. Carers, retired patients and those actively working, including some with chronic conditions, are actively involved as members.
The scheme requires the practice to gain the views of patients and enables feedback to take place as per the project plan. This development is laid out in the report that follows.
The Practice Profile
We have approximately 10,200 patients and for this exercise we have used several tools to understand our practice profile including: technical searches using our INPS computer system, GMS statement Correction Factor Reports as well as the information collected from the survey.
The practice makes every effort to gain as much information about our patients as possible so that we can understand their needs to the best of our ability. Information is requested when registering a new patient, on update information forms as well as through feedback requests via patient surveys, comments box and website feedback page.
The practice provides a range of services to the patients with the opening hours as follows:
OPENING TIMES
Monday:08.00 to 18.00
Tuesday:08.00 to 18.00
18.30 to 19.30 (pre booked appointments only with GP or Nurse)
Wednesday:07.00 to 08.00 (pre booked appointments only GP or HCA)
08.00 to 12.30
12.30 closed (Specialist Clinics only Midwife or HCA)
Thursday:08.00 to 18.00
Friday:07.00 to 08.00 (pre booked appointments only GP, Nurse or HCA)
08.00 to 18.00
(Appointments can be booked up to 4 weeks in advance with a range of appointment available, alternatively you can book on the day, and if all appointments have gone for the day there is a sit and wait clinic for patients that must be seen that day – all appointments are by appointment only) Appointments currently can be booked in person or by telephone.
We provide the following services
General GP Clinic: Daily Doctor Surgery
Minor Ailments Clinic: Daily Nurse Surgery for minor ailments (The Practice Nurse is available to treat and prescribe for minor ailments including: Coughs, Colds, Ear ache, Sore Throat, UTI, Skin Problems, Contraception, Pill checks, Blood Pressure medication review
Nurses Appointments: Daily Nurse Surgery (The Nurses are available for giving injections, taking blood, new patient medicals, smears, dressings, specialist clinics, minor operations, ear syringing, ECGs …
HCA Appointments: Clinics Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday (The Health Care Assistants/Advisors are available for taking blood, Diabetic checks, Blood Pressure, ECG, Suture removal, Weight, Height, Dressing if already seen by the Practice Nurse, Pneumonia Vaccinations, B12 Injections and Ear Syringing, Smoking Cessation.
Phlebotomist Appointments: Daily Surgery (The Phlebotomists are available for taking blood BP, Weight, Height)
Asthma Clinic & COPD: Asthma & COPD annual review or monitoring
Diabetic Clinic:Diabetic annual review or monitoring
Paediatric Clinic: Baby 8 week development check
Joint & Tendon Injections: Pain in your shoulders, elbows, wrists or knees.
Contraception: Contraception advice for pills, IUD’s (coils), Implants, Injections etc...
Smoking Cessation Clinic: Special clinic to help you quit smoking.
Travel Advice: Travel advice and vaccinations for patients going abroad to countries where vaccinations are recommended. Make an appointment 8 weeks before travelling.
DROP IN: Drop in to the surgery between 10.00 and 12.00 and 14.00 and 17.30 (not Wednesday) to have your Blood Pressure checked, an appointment is not needed.
Vaccinations: Baby Immunisations and Flu vaccinations by invitation only. Pneumoccocal for all patients over 65 years old or patients who have Chronic heart disease, Chronic liver disease, Chronic renal disease, Chronic respiratory disease but not Asthma, Diabetes mellitus, HIV Infection, immunodeficiency, no spleen, Cochlear Implants, CSF shunts and children under 5 years old who have previously had invasive pneumococcal disease.
Demographic and patient profile information as at March 2012
- Male patients - 5136
- Female patients – 5038
The practice has targeted as many groups of patients as possible. We sent out over 550 emails to a range of patients, we issued survey forms to patients that attend routine appointments. The annual influenza vaccination programme allows the practice to review all patients in clinically “at risk” groups and during the clinics we handed out a survey forms to these patients, over 1500 patients attend these clinics including Carers and Pregnancy ladies. Information about the survey was also included in the Winter newsletter and on our website.
We continue to develop our data base to enable to keep our practice population informed of the latest issues. Some patients are less keen to use PCs or internet based communications. With this in mind the practice offers all of the patient material in paper form and patients can collect from the waiting room or main reception. We also include newsletters with any invites or letters to patients.
All of our communications media are ongoing and newsletters, PPG information, website pages and notice boards are updated and circulated on a continuing basis.
Agreed areas of priority with your PPG
The existing practice PPG decided that they would support the practice in creating PPG surveys, advising on questions and collating and interpreting the results as required.
It was agreed that the PPG would meet to help decide what topics were of greatest interest to our patients for further comment, ideas and debate. This directly fulfils the demands of this step of the DES. Ideas were also generated from:
- PPG meetings held at the practice in the summer of 2011
- GP partners meetings
- A management review of prominent topics within complaints received at the practice over the past year
- Advice and ideas generated from staff, the GP partners and the patient group
The Practice Manager attended a course with dozens of their peers to seek guidance on how to run this DES in the Summer of 2011.
At a PPG meeting on 5th September the list of possible themes and questions was discussed at length.
In late September a draft of the first full PPG survey was circulated to the practice PPG for consideration and further discussion by email prior to approval.
The following project plan was agreed with the PPG:
- To circulate the survey for patients to have plenty of time to complete
- To email the patients with email addresses where they could return and email to the practice, return the form to reception or complete the survey on-line.
- The practice website was updated with the PPG Survey
The questions were collated using ideas generated by the PPG, GP’s and staff. The topic chosen for this first full survey was that of “appointments, communication and practice environment”. Several draft documents were prepared before deciding upon the finale version.
The practice currently has 10 patients on its PPG with 114 patients completing the survey using either the website or forms to complete the paper based questionnaire.
As the survey was completed the PPG reviewed the responses we had received and sent out further paper based questionnaires to 50 ethnicity groups patients. As this was an area that was identified as showing a shortfall of responses.
The demographics of the participants and the survey results can be found in the attached survey result document.
A PPG meeting was held on the 23rd of January 2012 where the agenda centred on the results of this first full survey. The answers to each question and an analysis of the results from the website survey were discussed and scrutinised at length. The Practice Manager has also met with the GP’s and the staff to discuss the results and help to collate actions as a result of the issues raised.
For conclusion and actions to the results of the survey please see the attached document.