Present: Drs Beesley, Campling & Taylor. Paula Martin (Practice Manager). Sue Thomson (Office Manager)
7 patients present.
Dr. Campling thanked everyone for giving up their time to come and discuss services that are provided.
Areas Discussed :
1. Afternoon Closures - explained the local PCT allow all surgeries to close, to enable staff training and GPs and Nurses to attend update sessisons. This is one of the few times, that we get together with our other colleagues locally. Bucks Urgent Care provide cover (as they do at night and weekends) and patients can access them by ringing the surgery and obtaining their telephone number.- we do need to know if this system falls down in any way
2. Appointments - system explained - we have half the appointments kept for on the day; then a quarter pre-bookable 24-48hrs and the remaining quarter pre-bookable upto 4 weeks in advance. The number of appts depends on staff available. All of the extended hours (7.30-7.50am with Drs Beesley and Taylor and the 6.30pm -7.30pm with Dr. Campling ) are all prebookable. Each GP offers eight telephone appts most days. Appointments for the day are all released at 8am - patients cant come into the surgery and book between 7.30-8, although they are able to come and collect scripts. Saturday mornings were stopped with the introduction of the new contract, when out of hours care was transferred to the out of hours provider - patients that had used this system - all felt this worked well
3. Telephone - we have 4 telephone lines and the phones do get very busy, it is not viable to employ someone to come and answer the phone for the first hour of the day and we do try to ensure that there are two staff on duty between 8-9am.
4. Music -Introduced after patient feedback to help protect confidentiality - it was acknowledged that not everyone likes pop music and more soothing music will be used as well.
5.Communication - there have been break down in communications when patients have come to collect letters / scripts and the receptionist cant find - this is sometimes down to human error. Also had feedback by email that GPs need to explain why certain tests have to be done in the morning, espeically when someone is newly diagnosed with an illness, so as they can fully understand why bloods have to be taken in the morning. We will be working on improving this
6. Prescriptions - Some problems with scripts going missing after they have been issued - maybe that the duty doctor has passed to the patients own doctor and why we ask for a full 48 hours to prepare. Errors with sending prescriptions to incorrect chemists - we will work on improving this.
7. Website / online prescriptions / online booking - most of patients present were unaware of any of these - we will publicise these services more
8. 10 min appts - is this long enough? No, especially if patients present with more than one problem, but sometimes these problems are linked. The GPs do their best to keep to time, but it isnt always possible. If we extended to 15min appointments, we would lose appts.
9. Batch prescribing / 28 days - Rationale behind 28 day prescribing explained - this was a national iniative - to help reduce waste of medications which cost the NHS millions of pounds each year. The GPs are now trying to get as many patients on batch prescribing as possible - this means being given 6months worth of prescriptions, which are held by a chemist and you go and collect from them, to save you having to order each month from the surgery - not all medications are suitable for this system.
10. Non- Attenders - we get 2-3 per clinican each week - it has become less with on the day booking. Persistant offenders do get written to.
11. Blood Pressure machine in Waiting Room - is it used much? The answer is yes, although we are aware that patients arent keen on being 'on show' - we thought it would be a useful aid as many patients blood pressures rises, just by seeing a GP or nurse. We will look to see if we can site elsewhere, but needs to be easily accessible to al patients.
12. Electronic Information - Patients present felt this was a necessity to speed up treatment, but when the National spine goes live it will only be certain parts of your record that ill be uploaded. Patients can 'opt out' if they dont want their records to be shared electronically.
13.Male GPs- Asked if we found having an all female staff a problem - it hasnt been and new patients should be advised by reception that we don't have any regular male GPs present. The patients present felt that if they were ill, they would be happy to see any doctor.
14, District Nurse- Rationale behind the nurses being based centrally explained as it is more cost effective and efiicent for them to work geographically, as previously you could have had nurses from three different surgeries attending to patients in the same road. We do miss the contact that we enjoyed when they were based at the surgery
The patients present were very pleased with how the surgery operates and it was noted that over the past few years there have been big improvements with front of house.
Another meeting will be planned for September time.