May 8, 2024
Minutes
Pond Tail Surgery PPG
Minutes of Meeting
Meeting # 16, Wednesday 8th May 2024 @ 1900 hrs, Lindley Road Community Centre:
1. Welcome: Geoff Stone (GS) welcomed all to the sixteenth PPG meeting .
2. Attendees & Apologies: Alan Brindle, Alan White, Geoff Stone, Huw Williams, Ian Smith, Jackie Clarke, John
Buck, Linda Baharier and Penny Geer, Fran Lemanska from Pond Tail Surgery (PTS) and Ifesi Anyamene from
Godstone Pharmacy. Candy Edwards, and Jenny Williams were not in attendance. Michael Swain, Rahul Tangiral
and Suzanna Zizeck will be deleted as they have not attended for 6 months.
3. PPG Terms of Reference & Purpose: The purpose for the PPG; namely 1. Improve communication between
patients, PTS, and the wider public, 2. Better understand patient issues and experiences generally, 3 Promote health
education for patients, 4. Review patients’ surveys, 5 Define Improvement Plan (with actions for service
improvement), 6 Regularly adjust Improvement Plan were not reiterated but remain.
The proposed date for defining the Communications Plan remains 4Q 2024. Sharing of information (internally and
externally) between practice, patients and larger community was important to enable improvement.
4. PPG Newsletter. The Newsletter team met and produced the May version ahead of schedule, congratulations to
those involved. The next Newsletter could include 1 Surgery and Pharmacy First unacceptable patient behaviour
update, 2 Digital Triage Update and Walk In issues, 3 Ambassador Training, 4 NHS Screening Programmes, 5
Medical Samples Collection, 6 Prescription Collection.
5. Newsletter Distribution – Newsletter was distributed on 8 May 2024. Newsletter summary was issued in Godstone
and Bletchingley magazines on 9 May 2024.
6. Recruitment – Other surgeries including Caterham and Oxted target Duke of Edinburgh participants to support
them. PTS tried unsuccessfully to mobilise DoE students, but will try again in the summer. AB to contact Oxted PPG
and identify possible DoE participants to become new members of PTS PPG.
7. PTS Surgery Update: PTS and Godstone Pharmacy reiterated Zero tolerance to abuse, violence and bad language.
Poor and unacceptable patient behaviour resulted with in both PTS and Pharmacy staff being traumatised. Excessive
discussion was held on this critical topic including police involvement, ineffective use of practice time, trauma and
stress from such incidents and potential patient exclusion from the practice. See further details in the Newsletter.
The digital triage system, introduced in Nov 2023, continued to offer significantly improved efficiency and resource
allocation. Recent “Walk In” queries off the street should be strongly discouraged as PTS efficiency reduces
dramatically (without the use of digital triage system) resulting in increased stress on busy front desk personnel.
Alternative measures, such as cubicles and tablets for digital triage completion were proving problematic.
The new medical referral system to Godstone Pharmacy was working very well. PTS audit programme is expected to
last until early summer 2024. The next National NHS Survey will be held in early summer for publication in August
2024.
Repercussion from PTS admin staff sickness during previous three months continued to impact capability. Part time
(22.5 hpd) Pharmacist was being sought with ongoing interviews. PTS continued to optimise costs due to higher than
usual short term staffing needs. Ambassadors’ training was delayed due to ICB, but will aid patients in reception with
digital triage issues. The new advanced Health Pod equipment was delivered in Feb but is still not operational.
Patient education for issues such as immunisation and NHS screening would be aided through the Newsletter - FL
will advise details.
Planning permission for the new PTS and Pharmacy in Godstone was approved on 29 Feb 2024 in Tandridge,
specialist details were being finalised. A training room with privacy will be included in the new facility.
8. Surgery Website: 3 public access routes for medical services include: 1 PTS Website (based on NHS model), 2
NHS App (preferred, simplified and constantly being updated in 2024), 3 NHS Website (upgrade ongoing).
9. Pharmacy & Prescriptions: Poor and unacceptable patient behaviour continued, section 7 above. Flu and Covid
boosters will be available until 30 June 2024 (many surgeries will not provide this service). Out of stock medicines
continue to be an issue due to Europe and Brexit.
Communications with PTS were working very well with excellent patient feedback. Patients need to allow extra
time, say 5 work days, for prescriptions to take account of “out of stock” and shortage issues. In addition, patients
need to wait for Pharmacy notifications (and not NHS App notifications) before collection. Publish lead times in
Newsletter (akin to “Walk In” visitors to PTS).
10. East Surrey PPG Network:
7 Mar 2024 NHS East Surrey PPG Network Meeting – MTM 1800-1930 hrs (240307). This period experienced a
lull in activity for public notification. Next meeting – TBD Jun 2024.
12 Mar 2014 South Tandridge Health and Wellbeing Neighbourhood Meeting – onsite 1400 – 1600 hrs (240312).
Lingfield and Dormansland Community Centre, High St, Lingfield, Surrey RH17 6AB. No new topics were reported
during this period. Future meetings - 18 Jun 2024 South Godstone St Andrews Hall, 17 Sep 2024 Oxted Library, 3
Dec 2024 Hurst Green Aggies Hall. Attendance required as GS will not be available to join meeting - all.
27 Mar 2024 East Surrey PPG Network MTM 1700-1830 hrs. No report.
11. Surrey Health Watch:
New reports for this period was issued 10 May 2024.
12. Facebook, etc: To be retained for an undefined period (MoM14 Dec 2023).
Investigate options for increasing publicity via Instagram, Facebook with LB - GS.
13. Next meeting: Wed 10th July 2024
14. AOB: NHS screening covered in 7 above.