March 16, 2023
Minutes
Pond Tail Surgery PPG
Minutes of meeting
Meeting Thursday 16th March 2023 @ 7pm, Lindley Road Community Centre:
1. Welcome: Alban Brindle welcomed all to the ninth PPG meeting
2. Apologies & Introductions – Apologies for absence received from Chantelle, Dr. Shelina Jaffer and Fran Lemanska. Michael Swain not present. Several members have recently decided to withdraw from the committee - Denise Milani (moved area), Richard Forcan (no longer worthwhile), Lydia-mae Hoadley (never attended), Peter Shore (other commitments).
3. Election of Chairman & Vice-Chairman – Election of Chair and Vice-Chair postponed to next meeting. The group has responded to the Chairman’s request for participants to come forward to help on various functions. Candy and Chantelle will work together to improve the Facebook page. Jenny, Jackie, John and Chantelle will form a virtual group to assemble the Newsletters. The next Newsletter Is programmed for April, so a call will be organised soon by Jenny.
4. PPG Newsletter–Jenny agreed to ensure all pages of the Newsletter are displayed on the PPG board at the Surgery and that hardcopies should be available on the counter at all times.
5. Newsletter distribution – AB needs to follow up to request distribution of the Newsletter through the Godstone Club.
6. Recruiting remaining members – Jackie Clark stated that a new member would start attending the meetings from May. Maddie has volunteered to assist in a recruitment drive at the Oxted County, with assistance from Candy. Jenny will also be able to organise a text message campaign to all patients between 18 and 25 years of age.
7. Surgery staff recruitment – Jenny announced that a full complement of doctors has now been successfully recruited and has started work at the Surgery. In addition, a new care-co-ordinator has recently started, and a new Advanced Nurse Practitioner and a new secretary has recently started. A new prescribing doctor will also start at the end of March. The GP team now consists of four clinical lead GP’s and a fifth salaried GP. Room availability was now a limiting factor in the Surgery, as rooms were limited for additional resources.
8. The Surgery team had recently had training on Signposting – allowing the Surgery team and in particular the reception staff to better link patients to the relevant service. It was suggested this procedure should be covered in the next Newsletter.
9. Appointments booking: The 2pm release of appointments will be removed as of the beginning of April, so all appointments would then be available for booking from 9am. There will be no more need for patients to call back at 2pm. In addition, under certain circumstances e.g. annual reviews, patients may now receive text messages with an invitation to click on a link to book an appointment.
10. Surgery website – No update. However all past PPG minutes and newsletters are now available on the website, and new ones will be added as and when.
11. Prescriptions & Pharmacy – the option for the prescription line will soon be removed from the surgery telephone system – reception staff will soon be able to deal with prescription queries directly. Starting soon, annual reviews will take place on patients’ birthday month, and patients may then receive a 12-month prescription, which can be collected every 2 months. So no longer necessary to request repeats. Lloyds Pharmacy is in the process of selling the pharmacy to a new owner. The new owners would be a husband and wife team who already own a pharmacy in New Addington. The sale process in currently underway but no date for completion yet. It is hoped that the new pharmacy owners will enhance the current service. They have also expressed the wish to attend the PPG meetings.
12. Facebook page – Candy and Chantelle will now look to start adding relevant content to the page and start distributing that to the relevant community groups
13. Next meeting 18th May 2023
14. AOB – Jackie announced that she has now been accepted as the Patient Representative on the Primary Care Operations Group. This will be a very useful connection for Pond Tail PPG. Ian announced that he had successfully recruited a new member for the PPG – Suzana Zizek – who will attend as of the next meeting.