Jan. 19, 2023

Minutes

Pond Tail Surgery PPG

Minutes of meeting

Meeting Thursday 19th January 2023 @ 7pm, Lindley Road Community Centre:

 

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

2.    Apologies & Introductions – Apologies for absence received from Candy Edwards, Denise Milani, Peter Shore, Michael Swain and Richard Forcan. Lydia-mae Hoadley was not present.

3.    Election of Chairman & Vice-Chairman – due to the absence of several members of the group, it was decided to postpone the election of Chair and Vice-Chair to the next March meeting. In addition, the Chairman will shortly write to the group with a request for support on the various functions that the group needs. At present, the Chairman is carrying out the lion’s share of these functions, so it was proposed that the group be asked to put themselves forward to take over some of these functions. Hopefully the group will respond positively to this request.  

4.    PPG Newsletter– It was agreed that generally the December newsletter had been well received.

5.    Newsletter distribution – It was suggested that the Godstone Club would be a good additional distribution point. This will be investigated before the next meeting.

6.    Recruiting remaining members – Jackie Clark announced that a new member had been recruited from the Traveller community, and will start attending the meetings from March.

7.    Appointments booking & surgery staff recruitment – Various new staff would be starting at the Surgery In coming weeks – a new care-co-ordinator has already recently started, and a new Advanced Nurse Practitioner will also be starting mid-February. In addition, two new GP’s will be joining the team in March. Once these have started, the GP team will consist of four clinical lead GP’s and a fifth salaried GP. With the newly installed telephone system, the resultant data would in due course be analysed to facilitate improved appointments management. Room availability was still a limiting factor in the Surgery, as rooms were limited for additional resources. Resources had been extremely stretched during December because of the sharp increase in Strep A infections, and the short-term need to respond to the rapid increase in calls and appointments for children. It was also agreed that the group would collate, publish and distribute a brief newsbyte about the surgery’s heightened response to the Strep A “mini-emergency” in December.

8.    The Surgery team had recently had training on Signposting – allowing the Surgery team to better link patients, relevant charities, and support groups together. Ways to publicise this initiative were discussed, with further discussion for the next meeting.

9.    Surgery website – as yet the final plan for the website is still to be determined – it is still awaiting some feedback from the developers.

10. New noticeboards had been put up in the reception, including ones for the PPG group, carer support and the wellbeing prescription service. The PPG will look at suitable content to put up on the board. The Godstone Village Association will also look at providing a comprehensive listing of village organisations and regular village meetings. There is also a new suggestion box in reception.

11. Prescriptions & Pharmacy – fresh attempts had been made to contact Lloyds Pharmacy regional manager and the village branch manager, as yet both without success. The objective would be to get a senior representative from the pharmacy to attend the meetings.

12. Facebook page – content additions remain slow.

13. Next meeting 16th March 2023

14. AOB – When there are problems with prescriptions, an audit trail can be requested at reception, and also by submitting a complaint form online through the surgery website. The revolving sign in reception was also discussed, and the plan is to change the wording as soon as the login for the software can be found (!). It was also suggested that the sign could be moved to be easier for all waiting patients to see.