Meeting Minutes - 14th September 2022

BACK TO MAIN INDEX

Present: James Boye, BATISTA PEREIRA, Aparecido Marcos (Mr), SINGER, Rochelle (Mrs), BARKER, Peter (Mr), Mr J Silken , TIRADO, Richard (Mr), LAMBERT, Jacqueline (Mrs), LAMBERT, Sonia (Miss)

Apologies: Mr Malcolm Alexander

Agenda Items

Improvements to reception including better access for wheelchair users.

At the last PPG meeting it was discussed that the reception workstations were not situated well behind the main desk to be very wheelchair friendly. The next day we moved one of the workstations so it was situated in front of the lower desk section and separated the two screens so that the staff member could be seen.

Face to Face appointments

Following the patient survey conducted by Dr McLeod we are planning to increase the face to face appointments for the duty and non-duty doctor.  The increased appointments will be implemented after staff training to ensure that the slots are used appropriately.

Vaccination Programme

The surgery is one of only 20 surgeries in Hackney that has signed up to deliver the Covid Autumn booster programme. As a surgery we felt that our population would be disadvantaged demographically when booking the booster as this is virtually only available online.  Therefore we have decided to offer the  booster to our most vulnerable patients in house and are due to start in mid September. We have already been out and vaccinated the care home Beis Pinchos and the residential home Fradel Lodge of the 5th September which was the day the boosters were launched.  We are planning to also go out and vaccinate the two learning disability care homes towards the end of September.  The flu vaccines  are arriving late this year but clinics will be added at the start on October.

Consultations with other practitioners

The surgery employs various different clinicians who support the GP’s and nurses in the practice and we discussed the staff available:

• Joseph Larkai – clinical pharmacist who works every day and can deal with minor ailments and all medication queries. Joseph is also the lead for the learning disability care homes and conducts a weekly ward round. 
• Bharat Uppala – clinical pharmacist who works one day a week and oversees clinical audits
• Dr Farah El Miligui – Clinical Psychologist who runs a weekly clinic supporting patients.
• Suyur Sehriban – Social prescriber who runs a weekly clinic supporting patients for 6 week programme.
• Mr Freddie Mathews – Physiotherapist who runs two clinics a week. Patients can be booked into session by reception team or clinical staff.
• Mr Arthur Tadique – Heart Failure Clinic , who run a clinic one Friday a month.
• Ms Christophine Asogwa – Diabetes Specialist Nurse , runs a clinic one Friday a month.
• Titilayo Oliyade – Care Coordinator who helps support the surgery in recalling patients in for assessments and runs a phlebotomy clinic ones a month.

Patient Survey

The survey has been completed with most patients wishing to see a return to more face to face appointments. We have therefore changed the appointment book and will be implementing the changes once staff training has been completed.

Complaints and personal Feedback

We ask that all complaints are dealt with outside of the PPG meeting as we cannot discuss individual care in an open forum.

Patient choice of GP – meeting specific patient requests

The surgery does find that some patients only wish to speak with one particular GP in regards to all their medical needs.  We discussed that on some occasions when a patients presents with an acute problems such as chest infection for example this should be dealt with by the duty doctor and the patient should not wait to be seen by a particular GP. As a practice we normally allocate any sessional or locum GP to cover the “ duty GP “ session every day which should deal with all acute problems and would not require an in depth knowledge of any patient’s condition.  Our other GP’s run the non-duty clinics and deal with chronic patients with long term conditions.

Duty doctor

Every day the surgery has a duty doctor who will deal with acute medical problems including urgent medical problems.  If a patient presents with an urgent condition they will receive a call back within 2 hours when the GP will either give advice over the telephone, arrange a face to face appointment that day in the surgery, arrange a home visit or a referral to another service if appropriate.  The appointments for the duty doctor and released at 08:00 and 14:30 every day.

Additional Services and equipment

Ear syringing – although not in the NHS GP contract we as a practice have decided to continue to offer ear syringing for patients over 65.

Clocks for waiting room were requested at last PPG meeting – two have been supplied as requested.

Toe nail cutting – at the last meeting a patient queried the toe nail cutting service which has a fee attached and is available at St Leonards – we raised a query with the GP Federation and they are reviewing the service and will let us know of any updates.

Upgrade to the practice building

We have not been advised if we have been successful in our bid yet.

Blood tests and pathology results

We are looking at the process of reporting test results to patients . When a GP orders a blood/ urine or stool test the responsibility for the test to be undertaken lies with the patient.  We are looking at the problem which has been identified that if a test is done and the sample goes missing the assumption is that the result has come back in as normal by the patient. ? Do we need to change the system and ask patients to check if their results have come back. We will check with other surgeries locally and see what they do.

Computer training

Despite several emails chasing up the work we are still waiting for the computer in the reception are to be connected to the WiFi – SS to chase again

Action Plan