March 2014

Local Patient Participation Report 2014

Establishing the Cedars Patient Participation Group

We enlisted the help of the Eastern and Coastal Kent PCT patient and public involvement team in order to initially set up our group. With their guidance we advertised in the local press and placed posters and flyers in the waiting areas of the practice. Our first meeting was held in October 2010.

Recruitment

We have continued to recruit patients by advertising our forthcoming meetings in the waiting areas, receptionists have approached patients personally and members of our established Cedars Patient Participation Group (CPPG) have set up a table in the waiting area themselves on various dates to promote and invite new members to the group. We have a dedicated page on our practice website www.cedarssurgery.co.uk for the CPPG which lists the dates of the forthcoming meetings and a general invite for patients to join us. There is also a sign up form for any new members who wish to join us. We have placed messages on the right hand side of prescriptions to reach a wider audience promoting our CPPG and have a dedicated notice board in the waiting room. Recently we have incorporated in our posters and on the website the option for patients who perhaps cannot spare the physical time to attend our meetings, to become virtual members and we could then consult them about issues raised and request their opinions about services. We have also recently introduced a text messaging service which we have used to send messages to our practice population with mobile phones to recruit new members. We have created a Facebook page for the CPPG. We also devised newsletters promoting our CPPG and these were hand delivered to every household on our practice list size. The practice has a lift to the first floor to accommodate wheelchair access to the meeting room in compliance with DDA regulations.

Profile of Group

The CPPG meet every four months, sub meetings are held in between if something needs actioning or discussing in between our regular meetings at the practice and we presently have 24 members from the practice population of 10293 ranging from 60 years to 88 years. This comprises of 17 female members and 7 male members. It was also a request from the CPPG members that they would like representation from the practice at each meeting other than the practice manager and reception manager. This consists of the practice manager, reception manager, 1 doctor, 1 practice nurse and 1 receptionist.

Aims and Objectives/Terms of Reference/Confidentiality/Constitution

These are made available to all members and are also on our website page and notice board in the waiting room. A confidentiality agreement is signed by all members before their first meeting to ensure all confidential matters discussed meet with information governance. Our policies set out in detail the purpose of a patient participation group and what part they can play in shaping the future of the practice and services we can provide.

Engagement

The practice manager regularly receives emails from the CCG with invites to meetings which is passed to members of the CPPG. We have two members who attend the regular commissioning group patient forum meetings and feedback to the next CPPG meeting. Following our CPPG meeting, once we have sight of the minutes our chairperson attends a practice meeting to discuss any points that have been flagged up by members with the GP partners. 

Local Practice Survey

We chose to use the General Practice Assessment Questionnaire (GPAQ) version R which had been specifically designed for the Patient Participation DES. This was presented to the CPPG for discussion and approval at the meeting held on 12.11.13. We discussed in light of the forthcoming registration with the Care Quality Commission, devising some extra questions. These were agreed and incorporated in the forthcoming questionnaire. It was agreed that we would distribute 50 questionnaires per doctor at the practice, this would be 350, we did in fact distribute 400 to allow for any that were incomplete or we never received back. The questionnaire covered areas such as receptionists’ attitude, appointments, opening times, doctor of your choice, attitude and care from doctor and nurse, access, the extra questions covered, information sharing, patient care and the practice. We conducted the patient questionnaire over a three week period from 6.1.14 and enlisted the help of the members of the CPPG to assist in distributing them to a random wide audience of patients and also to assist any patients you encountered difficulties in completing the forms due to disability reasons, this was approved with the PCT prior to allowing the members to assist. This also gave them the opportunity to take ownership of promoting their CPPG as active members. The questionnaire was also made available on our website for patients to complete and send back to the practice electronically. We sent the results off for analysis on 3.2.14, we received the results back on 11.2.14 and these were then subsequently discussed with the practice team and areas identified flagged up for improvement if necessary. We discussed the results of the patient questionnaire with the CPPG at their meeting held in March 2014. Copies of the patient questionnaire were handed to all members – we discussed all questions and the practice was congratulated on such good scores, most of them were above the national benchmark. Praise was given to the receptionists who work very hard and always manage to make the patient feel welcome.  A copy of the results from the patient questionnaire was uploaded to our website for patients to view and placed on our notice board in the waiting area for patients to read. 

Complaints

Anonymised accounts of complaints received by the practice were discussed with the CPPG members at their March 2014 meeting. We have a practice population of 10293 and received 10 complaints throughout 2013/14. It was explained that all complaints are discussed and answered at our weekly practice meetings and once a year we conduct a review of all complaints received throughout the year to address any trends and lessons learnt from these complaints. 

Keeping Patients informed

We have a dedicated notice board in the main waiting room, website page and a quarterly newsletter which we consult the patient participation group members for content. We also provide the newsletter in large print as requested by some of the members in the group for the patients who have problems with regular type. We now have volunteers from the group who manage this board and monitor the content. We have a facebook page which is periodically updated to keep patients informed about changes at the practice.  We feel this is a way of keeping in touch with our younger members as they mostly use social websites.  We are presently considering a twitter account as well.  We recently created a newsletter informing the practice population about the patient participation group and other services, opening times of surgery and general information. This was then hand delivered by members of the CPPG to every household on our practice list - in total it is estimated over 7,500 newsletters were delivered.

Opening Hours of Practice

The surgery is open from 8.15 a.m. – 6.30 p.m. Monday – Friday by telephone or in person. We also offer extended hours which consists of 5 morning sessions a month 7 – 8 a.m. and 2 Saturday morning sessions a month 8.30 – 11.00 a.m. These extended hours sessions are bookable in advance and walk-in on the day but telephone access is not available during these hours. One doctor and one practice nurse/hca is in attendance at each session. We also offer an online booking service called Patient Access which is available 24/7. It does require obtaining log-in details from reception to access this service. You can also order your repeat prescriptions and send non-urgent messages to the practice to obtain advice from your GP.