Lingfield Surgery PPG Public Meeting – Summary
20th July 2024 10:00-11:15.
Lingfield and Dormansland Community Centre
50 people attended this meeting at Lingfield Community Centre, organised by the Patient Participation Group (PPG).
GP partners Dr Chandarana and Dr Qureshi plus Practice Manager Wendy Maguire were present from the surgery.
Chair of the PPG, Clive Jecks, welcomed everyone and did introductions.
The floor was then handed to the GP partners. Below is a summary of their discussion:
- Current situation: it was explained that Lingfield surgery sits within Surrey Heartlands Health and Care Partnership and South Tandridge PCN. The largest surgery within South Tandridge PCN is Oxted. However, the number of patients on Lingfield Surgery’s books has grown considerably over the years and is currently 11,250. Recruitment of clinical staff (particularly GPs and nurses) has been an issue nationally and has affected the surgery, which has resulted in creativity of posts and using other healthcare professionals to ensure a time sensitive service can be provided, such as training up phlebotomists as healthcare assistants, employing pharmacists to speed up prescriptions, and the introduction of a Paramedic Practitioner. There is also availability of a muscular-skeletal practitioner. As well as the 2 partner GPs there are also two sessional GPs, Dr Odedra (male) and Dr Santhosh (female).
- Appointments: The surgery currently offers approx 532 appointments per week. These appointments are divided into urgent and non-urgent. Non-urgent are best booked via the NHS app or the Surgery website, whilst on the day urgent appointments need to be booked either in-person or via the phone lines. Surgery opening times are 08:30-18:30 Mon-Fri, with Tuesday evening and monthly Saturday morning clinics.Unfortunately, the surgery has a fair few DNAs (Did Not Attend). In June this number was 143, meaning 143 people did not turn up for the appointment they had booked, which would have meant 143 unused sessions for people who really needed it. There was a question from the audience about how this is ‘policed’ and whether these people can be fined or held to account, but it was explained that although the surgery keep track of the numbers and repeat offenders there is little they can do to penalise people who do not turn up, other than ensure the community are aware of the importance of cancelling appointments (so they can be relieved for someone who needs them) if they cannot attend.
- Triaging of appointments: there was a brief discussion about the triaging of appointments (i.e what is an ‘urgent’ appointment). The GPs explained that their website had online advice and guidance for common conditions, symptoms and treatments. The receptionists are trained to help in the triaging system, aiding speed of appointment in certain emergencies, but if anyone would like to speak confidentially when standing at the front desk in the surgery, they simply need to ask and this will be accommodated.
- COVID vaccines: The surgery has littleinfluence on time scales or place of vaccines, particularly for the summer vaccination programme which often takes place at a location other than Lingfield (eg. Caterham). The GPs explained that this is co-ordinated by NHS England, not themselves and hey therefore have no control. They said they are currently using a text messaging service for patients who are deemed most ‘at risk’ and therefore most in need of the vaccines, but as there are thousands of people in this category they go out in small batches of reminder texts, hence why some people may have received a text and others may have not, yet. The request from the GPs was that people engage with these text messaging campaigns as much as possible.
- Prescriptions: There was much discussion about prescriptions and the relationship between the surgery and Boots the Chemist in Lingfield. The GPs explained that patients can take their prescriptions to any chemists, it does not have to be Boots. Boots is completely independent of the surgery and although they have a good working relationship, the Surgery has no control over drug availability or stock. Likewise, the Surgery has no control over the NHS App for repeat prescriptions.
- Parking at the surgery, particularly disabled parking: The GPs are well aware that the parking is inadequate at the surgery but explained that there were safety issues concerning on site parking including the necessity for an ambulance to get into the surgery if required, which is why the current set-up is in place. Regarding disabled parking, the current disabled parking spaces is all that can be released. There was a discussion about whether some spaces in Gun Pit car park could be ‘freed up’ by the council for use for the surgery staff, so more disabled parking could be made available in the surgery car park. The GPs explained they had been told no by the council. Councillor Peter Killick, who was in the audience, offered to look into this further.
The meeting was brought to a close at 11:15, with an acknowledgment of how grateful the audience was to the partner GPs and the Practice Manager for investing their time in attending the meeting on their day off, and in answering the audience’s questions.
The PPG will be organising more public meetings in the future, which will be advertised locally and on their web site https://lingfieldppg.org.uk
A set of slides outlining the information presented during the meeting may be viewed by clicking on the following link: