HEATHFIELD SURGERIES PATIENTS’ GROUP
EXECUTIVE MEETING
held at 18:30 on Tuesday 19th November 2013 at The High Street Surgery
Present: Beth Simons
Heather Bruce
Elizabeth Keating
Patricia Weaver
Julie Watson
Apologies for Absence:
Colin Williams
Alice Tibballs
Margery Burn
The Doctors
Beth reported that Greg has tendered his resignation but will ensure that another
member of the youth council is encouraged to join us in the near future.
Everybody wished to thank Greg for his input and wished him well for the future.
Minutes:
The Minutes of the September meeting were accepted as correct and signed by
Beth.
Matters Arising:
 Telephone system
The feedback is that the queuing on the telephone has seen some improvements
but Julie still has some issues she wishes the company to improve on.
There has been a change of location for the Staff who deal with the majority of
the incoming calls which has taken them away from the Reception area. The
staff in Reception only answer calls between 08:00- 09:00 and then they
concentrate on dealing with the Patients who are in front of them. This has
improved the confidentiality for everyone plus giving the Patients who feel unwell
a much calmer atmosphere to wait in.
 Waiting Room Screens
There was some discussion around this item. Currently Beth has supplied Iris
with a contact from a local Surgery where the screens are in place. They allow
the Surgery staff or the PPG to place information on the screens but there are no
adverts. The total cost of a screen in the downstairs Waiting area would be
approx. £2k. Beth has approached Sara Geater to see if the CCG could fund a
number of screens in the Surgeries, as this would be an ideal environment for
them to get their messages across to a large number of Patients.
If the screen is not put into the Waiting area nobody will actually suffer, as the
Doctors know the patient has arrived and will not allow them to miss the time slot.
However, as the suggestion came from Patients through the survey we must
ensure that good reasons are forthcoming for whichever decision is made. This
now goes to the Doctors Meeting on 28th November, which decides on the best
use of their limited resources.
 Receptionists Training
There are a number of changes in the Reception team for various reasons so
training is on going. In the New Year everyone will receive training for Life
support and Child support.
Patients’ Website and Newsletter
Website is now live. Only had a few hits from people and just one person
sending us comments. We will aim to promote the site better and a suggestion
was made that we might use the area above the Reception Desk once the Flu
Clinic notices come down.
We are able to add specific alerts and web links to offer access to other sites.
We hope to expand the content of the site further and will trial setting up three
forums, that hopefully people will sign up to and use the contacts to support each
other.
Suggestions are for Mental Health, Prostate Patients and Carers
The first Newsletter has been issued with a print of 200. Next time we will use
our own green paper so that it is easily recognized amongst all the other leaflets
that abound in the waiting areas. Next issue should be in January and already
several ideas for articles have been put forward.
Young People’s Survey
Beth has now contacted Ms Taylor and hopes to finalise the details about how
and when the school will be running this survey. We hope they will use the
Website as it will make it so much easier for the collation of data. In the
meantime we will prepare some paper copies for use in the Surgeries. The
reception staff will be asked to encourage all school age Patients, who do not
attend Heathfield , to complete a form whilst they are in the Surgery. A
suggestion was made that this survey may encourage more young people to
come into the Surgery for help and advice.
Flu Clinics
The Reception Team sent their thanks to everyone who helped at the Clinics, it
really made their job much easier and many Patients had commented on the
efficiency of the whole procedure. The problem that Margery had experienced
because there was little notice in advance of the Clinics was highlighted. Julie
apologized for any inconvenience that had been caused but explained that the
Clinics can only be booked once the vaccines are on the premises or at least on
the way as often the Practice do not receive the vaccines when they expect
them. This would then involve a great deal of cancellation and upset to patients if
they had expected to attend a specific clinic. Currently there are some small
numbers booked for vaccinations but these will not require our help. We offered
to help if there were specific times when the Staff felt we could help improve the
Patient experience by being there. With adequate notice, we felt sure we could
set up a suitable rota.
Surgery issues
Beth reported that when meeting with Dr Wadman he had told her that there may
be a problem in the future with Patients being referred for minor surgery
procedures. He wanted her to gauge the feeling of our Committee about the
possible need to offer some Patients these minor procedures, e.g cauterisation of
moles or other skin blemishes, as a private session. This would obviously be at
a reduced cost to a full Private consultation as it would be a cost reflecting the
work involved not for a huge profit. The general consensus was that as long as it
was explained carefully and in full detail to Patients it would be acceptable. It is
now very common to pay £40+ when visiting the Dentist and it would seem quite
acceptable to be paying for some procedures in a similar price range. Beth will
feed this back to Dr Wadman.
We discussed the new houses that will be built in Heathfield and the opportunity
this might give us to find new members. The Surgery are already planning how
to deal with the increase in numbers. Currently new Patients are being asked to
register at The Firs. This will help to balance the number of Patients on each
Doctors list and it is hoped that it will give a better balance of ages to The Firs as
currently it is dealing mainly with the elderly and chronic Patients of Heathfield.
It had been reported to Beth that the downstairs waiting area was not as clean as
it could be and this had been passed onto Julie. Julie is currently meeting with
the Cleaning Staff to establish a better routine. The cleaning is covered by an
outside Company who specilise in cleaning medical environments.
Finance
Colin had sent a note to tell us that the full invoice for the Website design and
support has now been paid and he is holding £145.00 in the current account. We
discussed the need to register ourselves with the ICO, as we are involved in the
Surveys etc., this will cost £30.00. As there is sufficient money in the account we
will buy some more green paper for our next Newsletter.
Shaping Health Services meeting at Lewes
Elizabeth reported that she and Beth had attended this meeting and gave the
group a short summary of the afternoon. There was a presentation explaining
the National and Local problems that exist and that the CCG have a limited
budget of £186m to cover the majority of health needs in their area.
The CCG reported that from a previous public meeting they were asked to invest
in preventative care, help Patients manage their own long term conditions,
improve Community services and make better use of the voluntary sector.
Their vision is to unlock the potential of Community services and facilitate a shift
from the acute settings to community settings.
Their next steps are to review some services (Mat & Paeds, Mental Health and
Muscular Skeletal). To look at alternative ways of providing some services e.g.
eye conditions may be managed by local opticians, who are trained and qualified
to work with the Hospital Consultants. They are developing a model of care
which they will need to test and are looking at services that are appropriate to be
commissioned either in April 2014 or 2015.
The rest of the afternoon was taken up with group work. Each table had three
scenarios to work on and then these were summarized for the whole meeting.
The whole exercise was to show everyone what a difficult job the CCG have
when making decisions. Elizabeth was of the opinion that it was a complete
waste of opportunity when the CCG should have been asking for people’s input
and thus help the future shaping of services, actually the title for the afternoon
meeting.
Reports from Beth:
Beth reported that a number of the PPGs who are represented on her High
Weald Group are doing much less than we are, e.g. it is only recently that Buxted
PPG have surveyed their Patients.
There has been a lot of interest in our Young People’s survey and Alan Keys is
very keen that other groups should use it if it is successful.
The High Weald Group are beginning to share information and are inviting
people to come and inform them about their work. Sara Geater is attending in
November, plus someone from Health Watch and in January Dr Roche, GP Lead
will be joining them.
At the last GP Locality Group that she attended there was a lot of discussion and
anger over the management of staff at Crowborough Birthing Unit. Due to
shortage of staff and money over the half term week both Hastings and EDH had
pulled in staff from Crowborough at very short notice to cover their Maternity
services. This caused the GPs to consider how our local services could be
protected in the future. As they are trying to promote the Green Triangle local
approach it is essential that something is put in place as soon as possible. Frank
Sims has been asked to make proposals and will be presenting to the CCG
shortly.
The CCG have invested £10k in a pilot to improve the information that Patients
receive when making a decision about their care e.g when needing a hip
operation. A member of the group will telephone the Patient and discuss with
them all the implications around the decision making for that particular
procedure. The thought behind this is that GPs do not have enough time to deal
with the Patient in this amount of detail. However, not all Practices have signed
up to be included in the Pilot. Dr Wadman was at the meeting and declared that
he considered this to be the GPs job and did not want our Practice to be
included.
Beth was pleased to be able to tell us that that a proposal from a member of the
High Weald Group that the CCG should recommend to the GPs that prostate
patients should be included in the Clinical Trial that is currently run at Brighton.
This trial ensures that every patient is given an MRI and it has already raised the
detection rate from 45% to 80% and cut down the need for biopsies by 33%.
The recommendation had to go from the High Weald Group to the GP Locality
Group and Dr Roche, as GP lead, took it to the CCG. It has now gone to the
Clinical Executive Group for recommendation to the GPs.
The trial has already been recommended for use to Maidstone, Tunbridge Wells
and Haywards Heath GPs.
AOB
Pat had found a pamphlet in the Waiting Room, which she felt should be given
more emphasis in the Surgeries and passed on to all newly Registered Patients.
It very clearly and in simple terms sign posts the Patient to the various treatment
options that are available to you when you are unwell . This is an ideal example
of directing Patients to use other areas rather than presenting at A&E. We will
aim to promote this further through our Newsletter and Website and will head it
‘Where do I get Help’. Beth pointed out that in our Surgery we are actually very
fortunate that if we are really ill we will be found an appointment. However, this
is not the case in many smaller Practices. Julie explained that as we are a large
Practice with a number of Doctors on each day there is always a Triage Doctor to
see emergency Patients.
Beth asked us to start thinking about the possibility of a Spring event that
will promote our Group and the work of the NHS. Suggestions were made
about a possible Saturday open day in the Surgery. Julie will ask the
opinions of other staff, as they would need to be involved if the building
was open to the General Public, and will report back at the next meeting.
Date of Next Meeting
Tuesday 28th January 2014 at the High Street Surgery at 6.30p.m.
There being no further business the meeting closed at 20:20
Thank you and a Very Merry Christmas to all members!