Patient Participation Group
Meeting Note
25 March 2025
Attendees:
Volunteers:
Graham Laing, Chair
Penny Keevil, Deputy Chair
Barbara Joy, Secretary
Jean Lear
Jo Shimmins
Michelle Levy
Practice:
Stacey, Assistant Practice Manager
Megan, Receptionist Manager
Heidi, PCN Manager
Apologies:
Fiona Davis
Anne-May Bjerkan
Ashley (Practice Manager)
This meeting note is not verbatim.
Meeting started at 2 pm.
1. Welcome by Graham Laing.
2. Minutes from the prior meeting on 28 January 2025 were approved.
3. Prior to the meeting, Graham sent the volunteers the template emails used by the Practice, for review and so they could be discussed productively at the meeting and recommendations for any amendments could be agreed. The suggestions and discussions about them are listed in order below. The discussions were led by Graham.
Template reference Was the wording amended?
1 – 111 Appointment Yes Following your 111 call, I have booked a telephone call for you with Dr ______ today at _____ AM or PM to discuss your symptoms.
2 – A&E No Dr _______ has reviewed your triage form and has advised that you attend the Accident & Emergency Department at: Medway Maritime Hospital, Windmill Road, Gillingham, Kent ME7 5NY OR Maidstone Hospital, Hermitage Lane, Maidstone, Kent ME16 9QQ. Thank you.
3 – Booked Appointments Yes Thank you for your on-line triage form. A telephone appointment has been booked for you _____ with Dr/Other Professional______ on ____ in the AM or PM. If this is not convenient, please contact the surgery to arrange another time. Thank you.
4 – E-Consult Outcome Yes Thank you for completing the E-Consult Assessment. We can confirm we have received the outcome of your consultation which recommends a review within (___time frame). A telephone consultation has been booked for you with Dr/Other Professional_____ on ______in the AM or PM. If this is not convenient, please contact the surgery to arrange another time. Thank you.
5 – Face to Face Triage Yes Thank you for completing the E-Consult Assessment. A face-to-face consultation to discuss this further has been booked for you with Dr/Other Professional ______on _____in the AM or PM. If this is not convenient, please contact the surgery to arrange another time. If your symptoms get any worse in the meantime, please do not wait for the appointment but seek immediate care, e.g. 111, Minor Injuries, Urgent Treatment Central A&E, Community Pharmacies.
6 – Antibiotics Sent No Thank you for completing the online triage form. Dr ____ has reviewed the form and has sent a course of Antibiotics to your usual Pharmacy. If symptoms change or worse, please contact 111 for more immediate care.
7 – Routine Yes A routine telephone appointment has been arranged for you with Dr/Other Professional ______ for you on _____ in the AM or PM. If this is not convenient, please contact the surgery to arrange another time. Thank you.
8 – Task Face-to-Face Yes Dr _____ asked me to make an appointment for you for a face-to-face consultation. This has been arranged for you on ______ in the AM or PM. If this is not convenient, please contact the surgery to arrange another time. Thank you.
9 – Phone Triage Appointment Yes Thank you for completing the E-Consult Assessment. A telephone appointment has been booked for you with Dr/Other Professional ______ on _____ in the AM or PM. If this is not convenient, please contact the surgery to arrange another time. If your symptoms get any worse in the meantime, please do not wait for the appointment but seek immediate care, e.g. 111, Minor Injuries, Urgent Treatment Central A&E, Community Pharmacies.
10 – UTC Yes Dr _____ has reviewed your triage form and advises you to attend an Urgent Treatment Centre. Please download this link to choose the quickest option.
4. Regarding number 6 above, Antibiotics Sent, a query was raised as to what is meant by your usual pharmacy. Your usual pharmacy is the pharmacy you nominated when you first signed up at the surgery. If you do not have a nominated pharmacy, you will be given an NHS code that can be used at any pharmacy to retrieve the prescription.
5. There was a brief discussion about the Care Coordinator role. The Care Coordinator is trained to be in that role, to help navigate patients to the correct service. They help with triaging and the clinical pathways. The surgery has four Care Coordinators, one of whom is on maternity leave. They are managed by Megan, Dr Kerley, Ashley and Stacey. If you book an appointment, it goes through that team first. There is a 48- hour turn around time for a response but patients normally get a response in 24 hours.
6. The surgery gets online requests for appointments and other types of appointment requests, such as telephone calls and paper requests. The patient has the option of making the appointment online rather than waiting on the telephone line. The surgery has a Smart Inbox which categorizes the requests and sends them to the Care Coordinators. Having a two-hour timeframe for a telephone appointment generated a lot of complaints. Once the timeframe was changed to the doctor contacting the patient in the AM or PM, it worked better, and complaints stopped.
7. Newsletter. Graham telephoned five practice managers who have good newsletters and asked how often is the newsletter requested – hardly ever. It would be a good idea to put the newsletter on the bulletin board downstairs. The newsletter can be printed and left downstairs so people can take a copy. Not everyone has access to the website. Wording can be put on the annunciator board saying, while you are waiting, please read the newsletter. An address for patients to contact the surgery, can be put in the newsletter. Jo offered to bring a copy of an example newsletter. The surgery colours are greens and blues.
8. Ashley discussed the recent NHS survey. The last three years have been better for the local GPs. There is a monthly summary of calls in January. Calls where people hang up while waiting count as abandoned calls. If people don’t like triaging, then their experience is not great, it is subjective. Some people never give top marks on principle. The last three years was consistently poor. A new telephone system was installed two and a half years ago. That and other changes have occurred in the last few years, such as with management and contract changes, team dynamics. When reviewing the statistics for all the local surgeries, ask, how many of these surgeries are doing full triaging? In October practices are changing to full triaging, so our surgery is way ahead. It will be interesting to see the figures after the change to full triaging for all practices. We have a well-established team, the GPs are stable and reception staff are good.
Any Other Business (AOB)
9. At the prior meeting one of the action points for the practice was to share our recommendation with the Partners for disabled railings in the parking area. Ashley explained that we have to wait for the new fiscal year and the outcome after the new financial year.
10. Another action point for the practice concerned the phone lines. Ashley said that they had contacted the supplier, and it is not possible for callers to skip the options. Jean asked if it was in her records that she cannot hear. She said calling the surgery is frustrating and that other callers having the same problem could be some of the abandoned calls.
11. A query was raised as to how long a telephone appointment takes. The same amount of time is allocated for a telephone appointment as for a face-to-face consultation. If the doctor cannot reach a patient for a booked telephone appointment, they will call the patient several times. Some GPs prefer face-to-face consultations. Other GPs prefer telephone calls. A video call can be done if needed.
12. The surgery has received some complaints about the E-Consult form. The surgery is looking at re-wording the reply to say, we are at full capacity, so you need to see an alternative NHS service. This means the surgery has reached full capacity for appointments for four weeks. The patient can do another triage form at a later date and it will be re-triaged. In the newsletter, we could ask patients to tell us how often they not been able to get an appointment due to full capacity. In the newsletter we should encourage patients to put the correct symptoms so they can be triaged correctly as not doing so delays their own care.
13. The next meeting will be Wednesday, 2 July, at 2 pm.
The meeting adjourned at 3:30 pm.