PATIENT PARTICIPATION GROUP

Are you interested in finding out more about Ascot Medical Centre?

Would you like to influence the development of local health services?

We have an active Patient Participation Group but are always looking for patients to join us. We meet up approximately every five weeks here at Ascot Medical Centre. It is a friendly group and everybody is very welcome to join.

The Patient Participation Group represents the patient community and responds to the Practice's services from the patients' point of view. With the help of a PPG the Practice will aim to improve patient services and enhance the care and welfare provided.

Through the PPG patients will have a more important role and will discuss issues affecting the Practice, and help the surgery to deliver the best service it can.

It will have the specific role of:

• Will act as a resource to help shape practice development
• Providing feedback on patients’ needs, concerns and interests and challenge the practice constructively whenever necessary
• Giving patients a voice in the organisation of their care
• Promoting good health and higher levels of health literacy by encouraging and supporting activities within the practice and promoting preventive medicine
• Will provide a patient advocate if needed.

If you would like to join or if you have any queries about the Patient Participation Group, then please contact Harriet at Ascot Medical Centre

Dear Patient,

We would like to know how we can improve our service to you and how you perceive our surgery and staff. 

To help us with this, we are setting up a virtual patient representation group so that you can have your say. We will ask the members of this representative group some questions from time to time, such as what you think about our opening times or the quality of the care or service you received. We will contact you via email and keep our surveys succinct so it shouldn’t take too much of your time.

We aim to gather around a hundred patients from as broad a spectrum as possible to get a truly representative sample. We need young people, workers, retirees, people with long term conditions and people from non-British ethnic groups.

If you are happy for us to contact you occasionally by email please click the link below to open the sign-up form and complete all the fields.

Complete the Patient Group Sign-up Form Online

If you prefer, you can download the sign up form as a pdf document, print it out, complete it and return it to the practice.

Download the pdf version of our sign up form

We will be in touch shortly after we receive your form. Please note that no medical information or questions will be responded to.

Many thanks for your assistance

Ascot Medical Centre  - Patient Participation Group

Minutes of Meeting

Tuesday 22^nd November 2011

Present           Lakhvinder Sagoo (LS) - Chair

Caroline Chamberlain (CC)

Sukhwant Sagoo (SS)

Harriet Macrae

Apologies      Dr N Mohan

                        Dr K Crisp

                        Greta Halliburton

Minutes of the previous meeting

These were agreed.

Matters Arising

Greta Halliburton sent her apologies and has resigned from the committee due to other commitments.

Questionnaire

Caroline has received 100 so far and we have decided to continue to hand them to patients until the middle of December.  Caroline is going to give the committee an interim breakdown of the feedback at the beginning of December.  Parking is a recurrent theme and especially the lack of road markings.  A large number of patients would like the practice to open on Saturday mornings.   Patients thought the waiting room was unfriendly and too clinical and too cluttered with posters.

CC

Website

The website is being developed by My Surgery Website and should be delivered to AMC at the end of this week.  Harriet is going to load up practice information and depending how easy this is hopes the website will go live at the end of November.  The website has a rolling news section on the front page which we plan to use for flu vaccination information etc and we thought this would be a good way to advertise the PPG.  The website will have a separate tab for PPG news/terms of reference/minutes of meetings etc.  When the website is live Harriet will email PPG members and welcomes all advice to improve it.  We also discussed a Twitter account and the group thought this was a good idea especially at getting health information out to younger patients – for example inviting them in for confidential chlamydia testing. 

HM

Car parking

The AMC lease is up for renewal and Dr Mohan and Dr Crisp are negotiating 11 parking spaces to include one disabled space.  AMC is requesting these to be clearly marked out and a barrier system.  The 11 spaces was worked out as per D1 premises guidelines of one space per member of staff and two spaces per consulting room.

Support Groups

CC didn’t hear back from KC’s neighbour but spoke to the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation who recommended that one of the PPG go on their 5 training courses – these look useful as they teach now to establish a service and how to train a group of befrienders.  Each course is over £100.  CC is waiting to hear back from the befriending co-ordinator at Age Concern UK.  CC going to contact The Samaritans and The Salvation army to see if they run courses which might be cheaper.  CC is very keen to be involved with a support/befriending service for the practice and we all agreed there was a need for it.

CC

Notice Boards

LS has taken photos of Dr Crisp, Dr Mohan and Christine and is going to take a photo of Dr Oso on Thursday.  Harriet is to get a list of the doctor’s qualifications and a brief biography and their special interests to put on the website.

Harriet will discuss with KC and NM funding for a large notice board on the wall opposite the windows.  This would free up the two long walls and it was suggested that a couple of calming pictures would be welcomed by the patients.

The ‘new’ notice board would be divided in two.  At one end we will put AMC/PPG information and photos of the doctors and nurses.  At the other end we can display all the posters that are stuck to the walls at the moment.

HM is to discuss the numerous leaflets with KC and NM.  Do we still need them as people are getting information from the internet?  Are they a stipulation?

SS/LS/HM

Recruiting new members

Quite a few patients gave their names on the questionnaires and agreed to be contacted.  HM is going to ask KC to look through and suggest some patients we should contact and ask them if they would be interested to join the PPG.  We thought  8 would be a good number to approach with possibly the following demographic:

2/3 20s early 30s, 2/3 40s and 50s, 2/3 OAPs, 2/3 long term sick patients who are frequent users of the practice.  All members present said they would be happy to drive other members to meetings.  LS is going to draft some questions that CC can ask potential members on the phone.  It was discussed that we need to make sure patients are completely willing to join and participate with the group as it is dispiriting when patients leave/don’t follow through. 

HM/LS/CC

Any other business

Booking appointments through the website was thought to be a good idea as some members had had great difficulty getting through on the phone.  Sometimes the phone is still diverted to out of hours after 8 am.  HM is going to look into a ‘book yourself in’ screen and discuss it with KC/NM.

HM

Next meeting 7.00 pm 24^th January 2012

ASCOT MEDICAL CENTRE

PATIENT PARTICIPATION GROUP

TERMS OF REFERENCE

1.    Will act as a resource to help shape practice development.

2.   Provide feedback on patients’ needs, concerns and interests and challenge the practice constructively whenever necessary.

3.   Serve as a ‘safety valve’ for dealing with grumbles and complaints about the practice – representing patients but also helping them to understand the practice’s viewpoint.

4.   Assist the practice and its patients by arranging voluntary groups/support within the community.

5.   Communicate information about the community, which may affect healthcare.

6.   Give patients a voice in the organisation of their care.

7.   Promote good health and higher levels of health literacy by encouraging and supporting activities within the practice and promoting preventive medicine.

8.   Influence the provision of secondary healthcare and social care locally.

9.   Provide a patient advocate if needed.

10.Give feedback to NHS trusts on consultations.

11.Fundraise for medical equipment or other facilities to improve the practice and/or fund the activities of the PPG.

12.Liaise with other PPGs in the area.

25.08.2011

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