Meeting Minutes

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25 October 2024

Andrew Sarek, Assistant Practice Manager, welcomed the five attendees and chaired the meeting. He explained that the point of the Patient Participation Group (PPG) was to help the surgery improve how it provides its services to patients. He went to on to that he had worked with GPs and GP surgeries for over 30 years, and it was easy for him to think that he knows all about how they should run, but that is only from a manager’s point of view; it is important that patients are able to have their say about their experiences of the surgery and discuss how we could do better. However, this does not mean that the PPG is a place to discuss personal complaints, these should be raised with the surgery directly.

He started by talking about the 2024 GP Patient Survey which is done every year. A selection of patients from every practice in England are sent the survey, and those that are returned are collated and published on their website

The results for Half Penny Steps surgery were generally good, mainly higher than the national average, and comparable with practices in North West London. Andrew went into the results in some detail; click the link above to see them.

He then went on to talk about the NHS App and how it helps both patients and the surgery. Using the app, patients can book and cancel appointments, request repeat prescriptions, check test results and look at their clinical record. It is estimated that requesting repeat medication through the app saves a patient an average of 18 minutes. The surgery will be promoting the app in the coming weeks and encouraging patients to use it. Leaflets are available at reception.

It was suggested that it would be a good idea to have someone available at the surgery to show patients how to download the NHS App and how to use it. Experience has shown that once a patient knows how it works and understands how easy it is to use, they will use it rather than call the practice, where appropriate. Andrew agreed to take that idea back to surgery management.

One patient praised the receptionists, in particular Fatima, who had joined the surgery quite recently.

Andrew then asked the group how they felt about access to appointments at the surgery. The feedback was generally positive, with one person registered at another surgery saying that they usually have to wait two to three weeks for an appointment, while her partner, registered at Half Penny Steps, gets an appointment much sooner.

It was agreed that the next meeting would be in about three months’ time, in January. There were not any other points raised by those attending, so the meeting was closed.

Andrew has added the section below to further explain how he sees the PPG working.

Over 80 patients got in touch after all patient were sent a message asking if they would like to get involved with helping make the practice better. Andrew would like to use these patients as a virtual group, to ask questions via email or text. The questions would about possible changes to the way we provide our services and would typically take the form of a survey, with the results being shared with the group.

If at any time you no longer want to be a member of the patient group, please let the surgery know and we will remove you from the mailing list.