Nov. 8, 2023

Minutes

Pond Tail Surgery PPG

Minutes of meeting

Meeting Wednesday 8th November 2023 @ 7pm, Lindley Road Community Centre:

 

1.    Welcome: Alban Brindle welcomed all to the twelfth  PPG meeting

2.    Apologies & Introductions – Apologies from Alan White, Michael Swain. Huw Williams Candy Edwards. In attendance: Alban Brindle, Jackie Clark, Ian Smith, John Buck, Geoff Stone, Magda Hicks, Suzana Zizek and Ifesi Amene from Godstone Pharmacy. From the Surgery: Fran Lemanska, Jenny Williams and Dr. Penny Geer. Rahul Tangirala was not in attendance.

3.    Election of Chairman– AB confirmed that Geoff Stone had put himself forward to act as Chairman and will be taking over the role from next year. Suzana Zizek and Magda Hicks also volunteered to take minutes at future meetings. Other members should also consider volunteering for minute taking, as the Chairman will no longer be taking minutes in future meetings.

4.    PPG Newsletter–There was some discussion as to the importance of the newsletter. It was agreed that there is considerable scope for digital communication with patients, particularly through the NHS App, but non-digital through a hardcopy newsletter is irreplaceable to a considerable portion of the patient community that has no digital access and also as a reference sheet. It was agreed that the next newsletter should go out shortly to help communicate the new digital triage system being implemented by the Surgery shortly (see section 8). 

5.    Newsletter distribution – The Bletchingley Parish Magazine was suggested as a further outlet for PPG content. John Buck will investigate this. There is also a Caterham newsletter, which should also be investigated.

6.    Recruiting remaining members – No further report

7.    Update from the Surgery: Dr. Geer described the new digital triage system that will go live on November 29th. Digital triage will allow for much improved allocation of limited resources in the Surgery, ensuring an accurate response to requests for appointments. There will be two separate ways to request an appointment. Firstly, there will be a digital triage, through an electronic form, which the patient will fill out, with information covering e.g. an outline of the problem and convenient/inconvenient times. Secondly, there will still be telephone appointments through reception but this will now use the same digital triage process with the same form. Appointments will then be allocated according to appropriate needs more effectively, with most requests dealt with by the end of the same day. This should help the Surgery to mitigate such problems as lack of continuity of care (e.g. single patients seeing multiple people for multiple issues rather than one person for all issues), referring appropriate patients directly to the pharmacy, repeated visits by patients without effectively dealing with their issue. This digital triage initiative has involved several areas of preparation, including training for receptionist team, changes to the messaging system, sending out sms text messages to patients, posters in reception etc. A special bulleting PPG newsletter will also go out to all the usual distribution channels.

In addition, a full complement of administrators have now been recruited and they were undergoing training. Dr. Allie had also been contracted as permanent GP, rather than long-term locum.

Surgery redecoration – one room had successfully been redecorated on a trial basis but some changes were required. The surgery was awaiting a proposal from a patient with interior design experience specific to healthcare environments. Also installing TV’s in the reception area was agreed as a good idea, but needed to wait for redecoration to take place beforehand. Background music was now playing in the reception area, and this had been met with some mixed comments and needed minor fine tuning (!).     

8.    Surgery Website: - The new website now had a photograph of the pond and green, which was welcome.

Prescriptions & Pharmacy – both flu and Covid boosters have been available, either walk in or by appointment. Take up has been very good, with some coming from as far away as