Patient Participation Group

 

A Patient Participation Group (PPG) is a group of people who are patients of the surgery and want to help it work as well as it can for patients, doctors and staff. Your experiences matter and you can bring different ideas to the surgery to help us treat patients better or to improve what we do in some way. If you would like more information please contact us.

If you would like to put your name forward now for becoming a member please complete our PPG Signup Form

Latest PPG Minutes:

If you would like to request a copy of past PPG minutes, please get in touch with us.

Meeting Minutes - Thursday 8th May 2025

 

Present

  • PPG Members – Nina Hemsley, Laura Sands, Olivia Bradford, Sarah Malton, Sue Toomey, Eddy Powell, John Bundy, Alan Cook

Apologies

  • There were no apologies.

Anima

We discussed how the system is going. Admitted there were some teething issues however the overall feedback is positive. Eddy brought up an issue with trying to use the system for his blood pressure readings, this is usually sent over in a different way. Nina was going to investigate. 

Alan Asked if there were other systems being used, we advised that its either a phone call or Anima. 

In December 1 in 24 appointments were missed resulting in 51 hours of wasted practitioner time at an estimated cost of £6,700.

If patients fail to attend appointments repeatedly, they are contacted by Nina. They are also unable to pre-book appointments going forward.

Actions:

  • To keep monitoring progress to Anima to report back to the PPG

Phone Calls

Aly kindly put together some data regarding the figures of abandoned calls, (where people have hung up without speaking to someone). 

  • In the week 1/12/23 we had 664 abandoned calls.
  • In the same week of 2024 (after we had introduced the call back system) we had 166.
  • Since Anima was introduced the abandoned calls for week commencing 20.4.25 was 64. Showing a positive impact that more people are getting through and getting the help they need.

Newsletters

A newsletter was handed out to the PPG who all agreed they liked and would like to be handed out. They would like this to be added to the website. 

It was agreed that it would be good to have a quarterly newsletter.

Also mentioned it would be a good idea to include figures about missed appointments. 

Also to include the waiting times for certain appointments, e.g. physio and non urgent appointments'

Actions:

  • Ask Aly to add the newsletter to the website

Website

It was noted that the websites ‘news’ hasn’t been updated since October last year.

Actions:

  • Will advise Aly and see what can be updated

PPG Meetings

We have discussed the problems with trying to recruit new members for the PPG. It was discussed that one of the problems may be having the meetings during lunch breaks it is hard for working patients to attend.

So a suggestion was made to alternate the meetings between lunch times and evenings.     

Actions:

  • Book the next meeting in an evening 

Next PPG meeting    

I understand Eddy and Nina have been in discussion about the next speaker for the meeting from St Wilfreds.    

Actions:

  • Await to confirm with Nina regarding this

Talk from Carol from Care for the Carers    

Carol gave a very informative chat with what Care for the Carers do and the options that are available to our patients. 

She highlighted that not all carers realise they are carers and that as a surgery we should look out for, and ask people how they are doing. We can educate them using the leaflets and guiding them to contact Care for the Carers for help and guidance, as there is a wide range of help that they offer.