PPG Meeting minutes from 8/10/2015

Present were

J.N
T.R
B.D-M
J.H
G.B
A.H
I.S
A.M

Apologies from

LINDA LAWTON
LIZZIE BRAIN
J.N
J.W
M.R
M.R

Minutes distributed, a reminder to the group in general not to discuss personal problems/issues

Merger – off, not feasible, we can cope for now and have enough doctors – Dr Elias is long term.  Dr Bakshi moved here from London and is staying.  She is also a GP trainer and once she has been her for 6 months she can have Registrars here from training. Dr Foster is here until the end of October.  Dr Moss Langfield and Dr Hughes didn’t feel able to give notice but Dr Foster gave 3 months.

Surgery Pharmacists – application for this has gone in and we will either participate in government scheme or may employ our own which will help with audits, med reviews etc.

Queuing system – some problems, after it went live we should have had a 10 stack queue but as the whole of Bulwell Riverside is on the same telephone system it crashed on Tuesday/Wednesday and we have had to go on a 5 stack system until they can sort it out.  Patients can still book online, book a nurse in advance as they always could.  Even when patients are rung back and offered an appointment for that day they can still DNA, also where the nurse is required to assist doctors in certain procedures they need one appointment and the doctor a double we get patients DNA and therefore 3 appointments are lost.

Phlebotomy – good service downstairs reported, less patients there so they seem to be able to keep to time.

Doctor first – keep tweaking system, nurses taking calls.

Prescriptions – still a few problems as before.

Booking in machine – now working and software upgraded been ok since.

Results printed out by reception for patients at their request – should ask GP first.

Boots doing flu jabs – they are offering free flu jabs in their shops, Lizzie not happy as we had to pre order vaccines and if they do them at Boots then we will have a surplus which we have already paid for.  We are also inviting patients for flu jabs and they have already had one – they are taking around a week to notify GPs about which patient has had the jab, Tesco do the same day.

It is down to personal choice but doctors will lose revenue, we weren’t informed about this prior to ordering vaccines last year.

Ann ran through some statistics – Bulwell a deprived area, mortality rates etc, discussed in detail.

Any other business

A member commented on the Quality Care Act – City council involved in all Health Centres in Nottingham, can employees access patients medical records?  We will check but think it doubtful.  There is a facility to share records/information but details are anonymised.

Cordoned off area in front of main entrance.  Some staff were using a short cut to get to the car park and a car was reversing, could have hit them if he hadn’t pipped to let driver know.

Weekend working – are we going to do this? Not at moment, may be compulsory in future but problems enough covering week days without weekends too.

Question about GPs being paid not to refer – is this happening?  We still refer but obviously try to make only necessary referrals.  Some patients actually demand a referral.

Our website details given out to group.

A member of the group brought up the dwindling numbers of attendees – doctors never attend even just for a few minutes, Practice Manager missing from this meeting (annual leave) and Lizzie also missing this time (meeting).  Members were initially encouraged to attend as if it was important that we have this group but now it seems a bit trivialised.  Also we seem to be going over the same ground each meeting with the same subjects.  A suggestion to put anonymised minutes on the web page as a printable PDF in the hopes that we may get more interest generated and A.M will do a newsletter and if people can suggest topics to discuss via the web page we could form an agenda with new topics to discuss.

Next meeting 21/1/2016