Hawthornden Patient Participation Group

We have set up a PPG and would welcome comments from all our patients. A group was set up at an initial meeting on 19th July and they met the following week. Notes from both meetings are attached for your information. If you would like to contact one of the group members, please do so initially via the practice. In due course, you will no doubt be able to contact them directly. Chrisitine Pow, our IT Manager is the practice representative and she is happy to be contacted with any queries you may have regarding the PPG.

Patient Participation Group Update

Click here to read the latest Patient Participation Group update.

Download notes from our meetings:

Thursday 25th August Meeting 2011

Tuesday 26th July Meeting 2011

Tuesday 19th July Meeting 2011

Survey Results 2012/13

Click here

Hawthornden Patient Participation Group Annual Report 2012/13

Click here to download the full Patient Participation Report 2012

1. Introduction to Hawthornden Surgery

This practice is a long standing one and was founded by Dr Francis Gibbs in 1895. A number of long serving doctors followed working until their retirement and we now have 5 Partners in the surgery. The current Senior Partner is Dr Sarah Buxton who started in 1992, she was joined by Dr Michael Wolfin in 1996 and Dr Tanveer Hussain in 1997 followed by Dr Peter Newman in 2000 and most recently Dr Sarah Abbas in 2012.

We have at least one Practice Nurse on duty each day and we have regular phlebotomists who run sessions for blood tests each day. We also have a Health Care Assistant who can take blood pressure, undertakes health checks and administers ECG tests. We have a midwife who runs weekly clinics and a smoking cessation adviser who also runs weekly clinics.

Our main surgery is located in Wharf Lane, Bourne End and we have a Branch surgery which is usually open for one session a day at Flackwell Heath.

2. Surgery opening hours and appointments

The main surgery is open from 8.15am until 6.30pm Monday to Friday. We are not open Saturdays, Sundays or Bank holidays.

The surgery is closed between 1.00 and 2.00pm each day so that our staff have protected time for administrative work. Urgent calls are dealt with by our answering service during this time. The surgery is also closed for one afternoon per month for protected learning time for the doctors and staff. Posters advertising these dates are displayed in the surgery and an out of hours service deals with calls during this time.

We also offer early morning, evening and Saturday appointments for those patients who find it difficult to get to see a doctor during the normal working day. Surgeries run from 07.00-8.00am on selected Wednesdays, one Monday evening per month from 6.30-8.00pm and one Saturday morning per month from 9.00am -12noon. Details of these extended hours surgeries can be obtained from the reception staff.

Patients can make appointments by phone or in person during our opening hours.

Both the main and branch surgeries can accommodate wheelchairs; patients who are unable to manage the stairs may be seen downstairs at Hawthornden Surgery.

3. Patient Participation Group Membership

We have a Patient Participation Group (PPG) for the practice which currently consists of 8 core members. The age range for this group is 49-80 and is a mix of 50% male and 50% female members. 87% of the group are white British. No members have declared themselves as having a disability. We are aware that this does not fully reflect our total patient population but despite widely advertising and targeting specific groups, including running a stand at the surgery to publicise the PPG, they have struggled to get any wider representation. However they are looking to include more patients views on issues covered at meetings via email and other routes in the future.

4. Local Practice Survey

4.1 How and when the survey was agreed with the PPG

The practice agreed with the PPG in late 2011 that we would carry out a practice survey early in 2012. This would enable the PPG and the practice to see which areas of our services it would be appropriate for the PPG to become involved in. A standard GP survey template was used and the responses were collated by the daughter of one of our GP partners.

4.2 How patient views were collated

We made the questionnaire forms available to all patients attending the surgery and it was also available on our website to enable those patients who rarely come into the surgery to give us their views as well. We were encouraged by the number of on-line questionnaires that were completed and feel that overall we achieved a broader picture of our patients’ views than previous questionnaires, only completed in the surgery, have done. The survey was carried out in April 2012 and 397 patients completed the questionnaire.

4.3 Description of the survey

The survey consisted of 40 questions which asked about access to appointments & GPs, how appointments are booked, availability of appointments, waiting times, helpfulness of staff and experience of GP and nurse consultations. A copy of the survey questions is attached as

Appendix 1

4.4 How the PPG were informed of the results

The PPG was provided with a copy of the results from the survey and these were presented and discussed at a meeting on 28/06/12. A copy of the minutes of the meeting and the presentation discussed at the meeting, which includes the action plan, is attached as Appendix 2 & 3

4.5 Feedback from the PPG on the results

There was general agreement that the results were very positive and that the majority of patients are satisfied with the service they receive from the Practice. The survey gave no real cause for concern on the areas covered. There were no major issues or priorities that required urgent action.

4.6 How action plan was agreed

Analysis of the survey results identified 2 main areas for improvement around extended hours and prescription availability which were discussed with the PPG. They felt that these were the right areas to focus on improving from the survey.

• The PPG agreed with the proposal that the following actions should be taken:
• The extended hours surgeries were not widely known about by patients and more would be done to publicise them in the surgery and by Receptionists
• Prescriptions are often the source of patient issues with Reception staff and the process to ensure they are available in the correct place after two working days would be reviewed. Publicising the option to use the on-line repeat prescription facility was recommended by the PPG
• An additional action relating to the helpfulness of reception staff was discussed and agreed. This was to provide Receptionists with clear guidance on situations when swift access to a doctor or nurse should be given.
• The PPG also raised the issue of advance booking beyond the 6 weeks that are on the system. This is currently available on request and it was agreed to review how this might be extended or more widely publicised. However, the limitations are that the more in advance patients want to book the higher the likelihood that appointments will be subject to change or cancellation and this would need to be weighed up in any proposal.

Survey Results 2011/12

These results only relate to the questionnaires completed on-line and the questionnaires filled in at the surgery in paper form will be collated in April. The results will be published before the end of April 2012.

Survey Results

General Practice Assessment Questionnaire

Hawthornden Patient Participation Group Annual Report 2011/12

Background
In the spring of 2011 the Hawthornden surgery took the decision to set up a patient participation group along the lines set out by the Bucks PCT. This was done with the aim of involving our patients in decisions about the range and quality of services we provide and to give them an opportunity to express their views through a more formal channel. We felt it was important to try and get representatives from as many different patient groups as possible and with this in mind the initial open meeting was advertised as widely as possible throughout the practice area. Certain patients were contacted individually and invited to the meeting, and posters were put up all around the village, in the Grapevine magazine distributed in Flackwell Heath, and sent to various organisations in order to spread the word of the meeting as widely as possible. This included putting up posters in the library, in the Parade in Bourne End, at local nursery groups, local WI groups etc.

Initial open meeting
The initial meeting took place at the Bourne End Library at 7pm on Tuesday 19th July 2011. From the surgery, Drs. Buxton, Wolfin, and Newman were present alongside Tina Bradley, the practice manager and Christine Pow, the IT manager, who has volunteered to be the Practice representative on the PPG. The meeting was reasonably well attended with about 25 patients present.

Tina started the meeting by explaining that with all the changes that are happening in the NHS at the moment, it was important that patient views are consulted and represented. The Department of Health, via our local Bucks PCT are encouraging all practices to set up PPGs and there is a financial incentive for us to do so. Dr. Newman then gave an overview of his new role as Clinical Cluster Lead in the Wooburn Green group of practices which takes him out of the practice for one day a week, so that the practice has employed another GP, Dr. Bipin Soman, to see his patients on a Wednesday. The Wooburn Green Cluster includes Pound House in Wooburn Green, Cherrymead Surgery in Loudwater, the Marlow Medical Centre, Stokenchurch and Highfield Surgery in Hazlemere plus the two Beaconsfield practices, the Simpson Centre and Millbarn Surgery. The Cluster is part of the Bucks Primary Care Collaborative and Dr. Newman encouraged everyone to take a look at their website, which gives a good picture of how it works. The website address is www.buckspcc.co.uk.

The patient participation group, once set up, will set its own agenda, but from the practice point of view, we would like the group to feed back to the practice with the views of all our patients – inevitably the group present at the meeting did not represent all sections of our patient population, there was a lack of younger patients and one of the group’s challenges will be how to contact and involve these patients. There was some discussion about contacting patients by email and/or text messages, as other organisations already do, and this will be certainly be considered, as we are gradually building up a database of patients’ mobile phone numbers and email addresses. Sending out letters to all patients is a very costly and time consuming exercise and not really a realistic proposition. There is an issue of confidentiality about contacting patients regarding appointments in this way and patient consent should first be sought.

The practice will be conducting a survey later in the year and in the meantime will make our last patient survey available to the PPG. The practice will also supply details of our practice population, age distribution etc. and whatever other information they may find helpful. All information shared with the group will obviously be anonymised.

We finally asked if anyone would like to sit on the PPG and were greatly encouraged by the number of volunteers. Details were taken and a first meeting date was set for Tuesday 26th July at 7pm at the surgery.

On-going PPG work
The group has met several times since the initial meeting in July 2011. The members are hoping to set up focus groups of various types of patients and has already contacted (via the practice) all patients diagnosed with prostate cancer with a view to encouraging them to attend a local support group. The support group meeting reported an increase in attendance following this initiative. The PPG now has its own noticeboard in the lobby of the main surgery and space available on the notice board in the Flackwell Heath surgery to contact patients. At the group’s suggestion we are now keeping the outer door to the surgery open during the lunch time period, so that patients can write out prescription requests, and shelter from the elements if they arrive early for an afternoon appointment. They are looking forward to analysing the results of the patient questionnaire to give them a better idea of how to proceed further.

Patient Questionnaire
We are in the process of doing a patient survey which we hope will be completed by the end of March 2012 and we are planning to share the results with the PPG at their meeting at the end of April 2012. We are asking patients who come into the surgery to complete the questionnaire and this is also available on our website to enable other patients to give us their views as well. We have been encouraged by the number of on-line questionnaires that have been completed and hope that this will give us a broader picture of our patients’ views than previous questionnaires have done.

Once the results have been collated and shared with the PPG we will agree with the PPG an action plan setting out the priorities and dealing with any issues arising from the survey. The results of the survey will also be publicised on our website.