Pitsmoor Surgery – Patient Participation Group
Annual Report to March 2014
The practice has always been keen to hear the views and opinions of all its patients
and the continuation of the Patient Participation Group (PPG) was considered the
best way forward.
Pitsmoor Surgery continues to engage with all its patients to obtain their views and
opinions of the service it provides. Between April 2013 to the end of March 2014 we
have continued to actively engage with the Patient Participation Group (PPG).
Meetings
The Patient Participation Group continues to meet every 4 to 6 weeks on
Wednesdays at 6.30pm.
The PPG has had a Chair Person in position from the patient representatives for a
period of 12 months following an election. In January 2014 it was agreed by the
group that a re-election should take place for the following 12 months. Nominations
were invited from the group, which led to the re-election of the current Chair for next
12 months.
The representation from the practice is Dr Hugh McCullough and Karen Zaman the
Assistant Practice Manager.
The current group consists of 10 members, all of whom are registered patients with
the practice. There are 8 females and 2 male members, aged between 43 to 63.
We have an interesting mix of social backgrounds, occupations and ethnicity within
the group.
The PPG remains opens to new members and staff are opportunistically identifying
patients who may have an interest in joining the group. Posters have been
displayed around the practice and information is on the practice website inviting new
members to join the PPG. A priority for 2014 / 15 is to recruit some young people to
the group to give the PPG a wider representation of the practice population.
Priorities 2013/14
The priorities for 2013/14 were agreed by the group as follows:
1. Continue to educate all patients on how to access the service appropriately.
2. Improve the links with Community Groups.
3. Develop the practice website to enable more patients to be able to access it
as a source, including those who speak other community languages.
4. Translate key patient information leaflets into common community languages.
5. Conduct a patient Asthma Survey
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6. To recruit some younger representatives on to the Patient Participation
Group.
Achievements 2013/14
1. Educating Patients on how to access the system appropriately.
Progress in this area has been limited this year but is to be carried forward as
an action point for 2014/15.
2. Improve Links to Community Groups
The group have created links with community groups including HealthWatch
and SageGreen Fingers Mental Health Project who have both attended a
PPG meeting this year. The PPG feel that we could still do more around
linking with the community. A link is currently being developed with the
youth project Right Here Right Now who are going to attend a PPG meeting
in the summer to discuss there views and ideas around the use of GP
surgeries for young people.
3. Better use of the Internet
At the start of 2013 the Practice website was updated to include the ability for
patients to translate the website into 66 different languages to give greater
accessibility to our significant number of patients who don’t have English as a
first language.
Over the last few months we have been working with a website design
company to develop a new website. The PPG have been involved in this
process throughout. At the initial planning stages the PPG shared ideas
about what they would like to see on the new Pitsmoor Surgery website.
These views have been incorporated into the website design. The aim was
to develop a much more user friendly website that will enable us as a surgery
to communicate more widely with our patients through the internet, which our
current website has not really enabled us to achieve.
The PPG discussed what they would like to see on the website in terms of
key day to day information about the surgery, but also for it to provide greater
information around health care. At a meeting in November the first draft of the
website was shared with the PPG and a discussion was had about the
positives and negatives. This information was fedback to the design
company and alterations around the colour scheme and the initial home page
layout were amended in view of this. It is hoped that the new website will be
live by May 2014.
4. Translation of key documents into common community languages
This is one area of the 2013/2014 action plan which has not been successful.
We had decided as a group and a surgery to move forward with translating
the Practice leaflet into a community language but the Sheffield organisation
that we had selected are no longer offering this service. This is being carried
forward to the 2014 / 2015 action plan.
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5. Surveys
In 2013 we conducted a survey which focused on patient’s experiences of
their first contact point with the Surgery. The PPG felt it would be beneficial
to carry out the same survey again this year to identify if there had been any
improvements or decline in the service patients receive.
The questions were agreed with input from the PPG and focused on the
reception service patient’s experience in addition to the accessibility to
appointments.
The Patient Survey was conducted via the front reception between the 13 th
January and the 14th February 2014. All patients who attended for an
appointment in that period were asked if they would be willing to complete a
survey, we received 164 responses.
The results of the survey were shared with the PPG at the meeting held in
February and a discussion was had. The group felt that overall the results of
the Patient Survey were very positive and although we have not made any
real improvements we have managed to maintain the levels of patient
satisfaction. As a group the PPG reflected on the specific negative
comments that patients had made, which were predominantly around the
length of the queue at reception which is an ongoing difficulty. It is hope that
with the introduction of the self check in system in the next few months and
the implementation of a working group to look at ways to redevelop the
reception area that these factors may have a significant impact the length of
the queues and the overall patient experience, and that this will be reflected
in the 2015 patient survey results.
Below is the data of the survey:
How helpful do you find the receptionists at this practice?
0%
Q1 Helpfulness of
Staff
Very helpful
14%
Fairly helpful
No t very helpful
No t at all helpful
Do n't kno w
86%
How easy is it to get through to someone at the practice on the phone?
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Q2 Ease of contact by phone
1%
12%
Very easy
Fairly easy
36%
No t very easy
No t at all easy
49%
Do n't kno w/Haven't tried
2%
How easy is it to speak to a doctor or nurse on the phone at the practice?
Q3 Ease of Dr/nurse contact by phone
2%
9%
Very easy
28%
12%
Fairly easy
No t very easy
No t at all easy
Do n't kno w/Haven't tried
49%
If you need to see a GP urgently, can you normally get seen on the same day?
Q4 Ability to see GP sam e day
16%
Yes
No
29%
55%
Do n't kno w/Never needed to
How important is it to you to be able to book appointments?
Q5 Im portance of booking advance
appointm ents
10%
Impo rtant
No t impo rtant
90%
Appointments are available 6 – 8 weeks in advance, how easy do you find it to
book?
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Q6 Ease of booking advance appointm ents
3%
6%
Very easy
32%
15%
Fairly easy
No t very easy
No t at all easy
44%
Do n't kno w/Haven't tried
How easy is it to get results of tests done at the surgery?
Q7 Ease of getting test results
2%
15%
Very easy
45%
Fairly easy
No t very easy
No t at all easy
38%
Do n't kno w/Haven't tried
How happy are you with the level of confidentiality around handling your results?
Q8 Confidentiality of results
2% 6%
Very happy
21%
Fairly happy
No t very happy
No t at all happy
71%
Do esn’ t apply
If you are on repeat prescription: How easy is it for you to order a prescription?
Q9 Ease of ordering repeat prescriptions
1%
15%
1%
20%
Very easy
Fairly easy
63%
No t very easy
No t at all easy
Do n't kno w/Haven't tried
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The practice undertakes to supply a repeat within 2 working days. How often is this
target met?
Q10 Repeat prescription w ithin 2 days
3%
17%
A ll o f the time
M o st o f the time
22%
58%
A bo ut half o f the time
Less than half o f the time
Do n't kno w, never tried
6. To recruit younger representatives on to the PPG.
This year the group have recruited two new members through the use of
advertising within the surgery and on the website although no younger
patients have come forward to express an interest. This will be an item
forwarded on to the coming year’s action plan.
Action Plan 2014/15
1. Recruit more new members to the PPG from community to have a wider
representation of the local community for example younger people under 25
and patients from the Eastern European Communities.
2. To represent the patients by being involved in a working group with practice
staff to look at ways to redevelop the reception area layout to improve the
experience for patients.
3. To continue to educate both new and existing patients in the most
appropriate use of the service.
4. Actively work to get leaflets / questionnaires translated into community
languages.
Practice Profile
The area served by the practice is largely a wedge of North Sheffield, fanning out
from a point on The Wicker. This means that the majority of patients are relatively
local or on bus/arterial routes that lead near the surgery. The housing has
historically been council or rented with some less expensive owner occupied
properties, but hundreds of units have been demolished in recent years.
The cheaper housing costs mean there is an excess of specialist housing locally;
nursing homes, learning disabilities units, psychiatric hostels, B & B hostels, mother
and baby unit, accommodation for vulnerable women, etc. Most of these are catered
for by the practice and represent a disproportionate workload.
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Social problems and economic deprivation remain major issues for our patients but
the nature of these varies over time with the societal changes that transform our
patient population. There are now many new ethnic minority groups made up of
new migrants from Eastern Europe as well as asylum seekers and refugees. There
are also well established populations of people from the Caribbean, Pakistan,
Yemen and Somalia.
Economic migration from Europe has largely replaced refugee group since 2006.
The transient nature of a proportion of our population means that we experience an
annual patient turnover of approximately 30%.
Approximately 2000 of our consultations each year are undertaken with a
professional interpreter. This figure increases significantly when we also include
those consultations that have family or friends interpreting for the patient. The recent
immigrants often have many untreated medical problems and disabilities as well as
significant psychosocial problems related to recent uprooting and transplanting in a
very different environment.
The practice is open 6 days per week and provides a full range of standard and
enhanced medical services, including extended opening hours.
Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
8.30-6.00
8.30-6.00
8.30-12.30 & 2.00-8.00
8.30-6.00
7.30-6.00
9.00-11.30
Access to clinicians is predominantly by appointment although telephone
consultations are available every day and we operate a same day triage service for
urgent problems.
All the permanent GPs participate in the extended hour’s services on a rota basis –
which is by appointment only. In February we increased our extended hour’s
provision as a pilot to provide appointments between 7.30am and 8.30am on a
Friday.
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