PPG Community meeting

This meeting was held to explain the PPG to the community: why it exists, who are the members and how it will operate.

Attendees

PPG, PPG Associate Members Caroline Upton, (Head of Primary Care Commissioning and Development at Surrey Heartlands), Wendy Maguire (Practice Manager Lingfield Surgery) Lynette Farrington (Operations Manager Lingfield Surgery) approx. 50 members of the public.

Apologies

Received from Charlotte Swann, Mags Savile-Brown

The meeting adopted the following Agenda:

• 10:00 Introduction
• Who are we?
• Why have we been formed?
• How will we operate?
• Lingfield House (an opportunity to discuss the ICB requirements for the new GP surgery suggested in their development proposal)
• Primary Care Access Recovery Plan and Pharmacy First - Caroline Upton
• Q&A
• 11:00 Close

The PPG

Clive Jecks explained that the PPG was formed as a result of a request by the Surgery. This is a requirement for NHS surgeries and the resulting communication helps all parties to achieve the best outcomes from available resources.

The 7 PPG members and Associates are chosen to represent as many groups of surgery patients as possible. Communication will be via the web site https://lingfieldppg.org.uk, emails and where people do not have access to digital methods, written messages that can be left for us at the Surgery..

Lingfield House

There is a proposed building development at Lingfield House, in which a new surgery is proposed. The NHS representatives explained that there is no dialogue with the Surgery and Caroline Upton said that a new building is not a priority; the Surgery representatives added that it is not required. The challenge for all practices is finding medical staff. Lingfield is successful in this area and has a CQC classification of GOOD. For balance, Clive explained that the developer had contacted him and reasoned that no application for a new surgery would succeed until and unless planning permission for the overall Lingfield House development had been agreed in advance.

Surrey Heartlands

Caroline Upton presented a plan to enhance patients' access to Primary Care.

Key points:

• Caroline encouraged the use of the NHS app, to save time for all parties. It can be used for everything except appointments
• Our Primary Care Network is South Tandridge, which involves Oxted, Lingfield and Godstone working together with Social Care and community services to improve patient care.
• The Secondary Care for S Tandridge is East Surrey Hospital. It will no longer be necessary for hospital consultants always to refer back to the GP; consultants can brief one another.
• Pharmacy First. Certain local pharmacies will be authorised to offer professional healthcare advice, treatments and medicines for common illnesses without the need for a GP appointment.

The Q&A session produced some very helpful dialogue.

Key points:

1. It is not necessary or beneficial to remain on the phone when making an appointment. The digital phone system allows the caller to retain their space in a queue by pressing (1) for a call back.
2. The surgery web site has a contact booking link that works well.
3. The surgery offered to help people with the NHS app and the booking system
4. A regular update by the surgery in the Community News would be very useful, particularly for those who prefer paper communications.
5. There was a clear appetite for a regular meeting. It was widely agreed that the Saturday morning format worked and that a follow up meeting in 6 months would be appropriate.
6. One attendee asked why she is having to wait 35 weeks for a physio appointment. The Surgery representatives stated this should not be the case and suggested the individual should call the secondary care provider directly, since the surgery has no control over referral wait times.
7. Another attendee questioned why blood test and X Ray results are not shared between hospital trusts and GP surgeries. This is an accepted weakness and is unfortunately outside the remit of this group, as they all use different systems.
8. A question was raised as to why Blindley Heath and Dormansland were not addressed. It was pointed out that there were in fact attendees from both locations, but our interest is functional, not geographic.