PATIENT PARTICIPATION GROUP MEETING
WEDNESDAY 24TH JUNE 2015
Present: Colin, Gerard, Jackie (Practice Manager), Dr Summerfield, Dr Gorodetskaia,
Richard (Admin Team)
Apologies from – Shirley, Mark, Lillian & Doreen
 Late meeting time – The meeting was arranged for 6.30pm in hope that we would be
able to attract some more members of the practice population to join the group at a
more sociable time. The meeting was advertised on the website, waiting room notice
board and letters were sent to our regular members. We are slightly disappointed with
the turn out especially as the staff and Doctors stayed behind after hours, so a big
thank you to Colin and Gerard for coming along. It was decided to revert back to our
normal meeting time of 4pm in the afternoon for the next meeting.
 Patient arrival screen removed – As discussed in previous meetings with the group the
Practice has now removed the self-arrival screen that was in the waiting room.
Originally the machine was meant to help a patient arrive for a pre-booked
appointment if there was a long queue at the front desk.
Comments made by PPG members
‘Patients prefer ease of mind when they arrive and like to be acknowledged by the
reception staff rather than sitting down in the waiting room wondering if the machine
arrived you’.
‘Machine was very poorly organised and caused more confusion to patients than help’.
 Walk-in Clinic – After a lot of discussion the practice will be keeping the walk-in clinic
but with a few changes. The Walk-in clinic will now have a certain amount of patients
who can be seen every day due to Doctors having to finish morning surgery on time to
do their afternoon surgeries, paperwork, prescriptions and home visits. Patients will
need to come to the surgery still to put their names down between 8.30am – 10am,
but once the maximum number has been reached you will either be asked to come
back the next day or if urgent for the same day you will go on the telephone triage for
the on-call GP to call you and assess you over the phone.
 New salaried GP and Practice Nurse – As from September the practice will be taking
on Dr Faircloth who has been working at the surgery since September 2014 as a
salaried GP. This will provide the practice with and extra 6 sessions per week with one
of the sessions being during our extended hours in the evening.
We have also taken on a new Practice nurse who will be working at the surgery on
Monday’s and Tuesday’s. This will provide the practice with a vast amount of
appointments with practice nurses and Health Care Assistants.
The Practice is trying really hard to provide as many appointments and have as much
clinical staff as possible but we have simply run out of space now! We have built and
changed the building to its complete maximum and will have GP’s and Nurses sharing
rooms now during various parts of the days to have as many appointments as possible.
Three surgeries in the area will be closing soon and Islington CCG are calling all
surgeries asking if we have any more capacity as well as all of the new flats being built
close to the surgery. At the moment we will still register any patient who is in our
catchment area.
 Practices opening 7 days a week – The PPG members asked the GP’s for their opinion
as to if GP surgeries opening 7 days a week would be viable?
The GP’s feel that there isn’t enough GP’s in the country for the system to work five
days a week let alone 7 days a week. Statistics showed that the pilot scheme being run
in Yorkshire that a lot of appointments on the weekends are not being booked and
GP’s are sitting in surgeries without patients to see. We would like to see the current
system improved first before trying to add on more strain.
 I-HUB – Islington CCG has been given funding for a pilot scheme to run extended hours
services at three different existing surgeries in the area. Patients in Islington will be
able to pre-book appointments in the evening up until 8.30pm and also book
appointments on a Saturday or Sunday. Clinical and non-clinical staff at Islington GP
surgeries are currently being asked if there is any interest to work at any of the I-HUBS
outside of their normal hours.
 Longer appointments for older patients – Would we be able to give 15 minute
appointments to elderly patients as they may have more than one ailment to discuss?
Currently not enough capacity as if appointments are 15 minutes than there would be
less pre-bookable appointments left. A pre-booked appointment has slightly more
flexibility than during a busy walk-in clinic.
 Practice Survey – This isn’t compulsory but if the group or practice has anything that
we would want to look at and survey the patients then we would be happy to conduct
a survey.

Complaints – Only one complaint since the previous meeting and that was with
regards to not being able to pick the GP of your choice in the walk-in clinic. If we let
patients pick then one GP might see 20 patients and another 8, so we can only
accommodate for if a patient wishes to see a male or female.
This year the practice has had to send more complaints to patients than complaints
received against the practice mostly due to rudeness and/or aggressive behaviour.
The next meeting will be advertised on the practice website, newsletter and in the
waiting room in reception. If you would like to join the PPG group we also send out
letter reminders to group members so please give your details in person or over the
telephone to a member of the reception team and this will be passed on to Jackie
the Practice Manager.