MINUTES OF THE PATIENT REFERENCE GROUP MEETING HELD AT THE LEEDS ROAD SURGERY ON

THURSDAY 29th November 2012

Present:Malcolm Wailes (Chair)MW

Debbie Trantor (Secretary)DT

Andrew King (Practice Manager)AK

Brenda SutcliffeBS

Ann MorrisAM

Ann Olequi-MeadusAOM

Jennifer StaceyJS

Helen Stokes (Item 3)HS

ApologiesStephanie WalkerSW

Guy DickieGD

Amanda AddymanAA

1APOLOGIES AND WELCOME

MW welcomed everyone to the meeting.

2MINUTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING

MW asked if each member of the group could forward 1 or 2 questions to ask AK that patients might want to know. These questions will be put onto the practice’s website with answers.

3A DAY IN THE LIFE OF……………………………..A MEDICAL RECEPTIONIST

Helen Stokes was invited by the group to explain the day to day duties of the receptionist at the Leeds Road Surgery. Helen explained that there are 6 receptionists at the surgery with 1 receptionist permanently at the surgery in Pannal each morning. There is a full-time receptionist and the rest are part-time varying from 20 hours to 36 hours. The practice has 3 receptionists at Leeds Road, 2 in the back office and 1 on the front desk and each receptionist will rotate so that no-one is at the front desk all the time. The main duties of the receptionist on the front desk is to deal with patients that come in and the 2 receptionists in the back office deal with the telephone calls. The receptionist starts at pre-opening time and during that time, they go round the doctor’s rooms, checking that everything is switched on ready for the day. Also before 8:30am they can deal with anything that has been left from the day before as some of the doctors work later and leave work for them to deal with.

If a doctor rings in sick, the receptionist tries to ring as many patients as possible to cancel appointments before 8:30am. At 8:30am the surgery is open and the telephone calls come through automatically which is the surgery’s busiest time. The receptionist is now asking more questions which are made by the Partners (not the receptionists) or AK to help ease congestion and to make sure that the patient gets put through to the right person. By doing this, the practice saved approx. 130 appointments in one week because people were making an appointment to get a sick note and trying to book appointments that the telephone doctor is there for and could be dealt with over the telephone. A lot of patients don’t realise that there is a telephone doctor and feel that they have to see somebody. Patients are asked to ring before 10:30am for urgent matters and also to speak to the telephone doctor. Inbetween that, they are dealing with prescriptions that come through that have been signed by the doctors. Following the cessation of dispensing for 1500 patients in the Pannal/Burnbridge area, the receptionists have a lot more repeat prescriptions to deal with. They all have to be sorted because patients can now nominate a chemist to deal with their prescriptions. MW asked Helen if the receptionist knows which chemist is dealing with which patient. HS replied that they ask the patient to fill out a nomination form and any prescription written for them whether an acute or a repeat will go to that chemist. The surgery keeps a track of all prescriptions due to queries that come back from chemists about items being” missed off”. MW asked what happens if the patient wants to change chemists, HS replied that another nomination form needs to be filled out. AOM asked how the system works for repeat prescriptions. HS said that the patient can ask the pharmacist to do this.

In the afternoon, telephone calls come in after 2.00pm for test results, and the receptionists then try to do admin work, but continue answering the telephones.

AOM asked HS if the receptionist initiates the telephone calls to patients if results came in that required urgent action. HS said that all results go through to the doctor and then if they want the patient to contact us, they send out a letter asking them to ring reception after 2.00pm for a message from the doctor on all non urgent cases.

MW asked if patients, both face to face and over the telephone are receptive to what the receptionist has to say. HS said that this year, morepatients have been annoyed and some of them havebeen quite abusive both on the telephone and at the front desk.

MW asked if there was anything that the group could do to assist. HS suggested that one member of the group be present in the waiting area on a monthly basis (possibly the 3rd Friday of each month)to provide patients with a better understanding of how the practice is ran and pick up any issues. The group would then feedback to the partners. The first session will be held on the 18th January 2013 from 10.00am to 1.00pm. AK willprovide the group with a list of who does what at the practice. HS suggested that the first member of the group should come into the surgery beforehand and go round each department.

The group thanked Helen for attending the meeting and providing the group with a valuable insight into the receptionist roles.

4PRACTICE UPDATE

AK informed the group of the following changes:-

-Dr Anna Powell is still off on long-term sick.

-Dr Ben Shacklock on short-term sick.

-The new senior Practice Nurse Gail Sibling has left due to her husband being re-located.

The practice has re- advertised but no suitable replacement has been found yet.

-Annette, one of the receptionists left in October. The vacancy has been advertised and hopefully this will be filled shortly.

5SPOFFORTH AREA

Nothing to report as Amanda, the Spofforth representative couldn’t make the meeting.

6HUBY AREA

JS will ask people from the village from either Church or work to help collect prescriptions for those patients who have had a home visit or cannot get out to collect them. JS will advertise in the parish magazine. AK said that this was not a problem as long as the patient signed to give permission to collect prescriptions.

7PRACTICE TELEPHONE SYSTEM

The practice has had numerous problems with the telephone system. Power and telephone systems went down locally twice while workmen were working outside. The problems with the system have been:

-People have been inadvertently being cut off.

-When the system goes down, the patient isn’t aware as the system is still live and the patient stills get a messageand sit in a queue.

The practice is to announce Christmas opening times and a new message “if you ring between 8.30 and 9.30 the practice will ask you to ring back if not urgent. If there is a queue of 20 callers or more, the surgery will ask you to ring back and the call will automatically be switched off”.

10ANY OTHER BUSINESS

MW told the group that he went along to a Clinical Commissioning group along with DT but it was hijacked by North Yorkshire Healthwatch.No new information was gleaned only a repeat of the information from the previous CCG meeting MW handed out a copy of the 12 month plan for the Commissioning Group.

The next meeting of the CCG is schedule for the 22nd January 2013 at 6.15pm to 7.45pm.

11DATE OF NEXT MEETING

Our nextmeeting will be the AGM on Thursday 7th March 2013 at 6.30pm.