Present:
David Bellamy, Chair of Littledown Surgery Patient Group
Emma Prince, Practice Manager
Julie Hall, Assistant PracticeManager/Reception Manager
11 patients
- Apologies: From a number of patients
- Welcome from the Chair
David Bellamy welcomed the patients who had attended, and introduced himself for anyone who was not at the previous meeting. David is a former GP at James Fisher Medical Centre, and has been a patient at the Littledown Surgery for some time. He is also a governor at Bournemouth hospital.
David explained that he felt the purpose of the Patient Group was to help the surgery run effectively and efficiently and to play a role in the monitoring of the way the practice is run. - Health and Social Care Information Centre – Care Data
We discussed the new national system which extracts data from practice systems to improve the services offered and to provide the best possible care. We discussed why the information was to be collected, and the types of projects or audits the information will be used for. Much of the information extracted will be anonymous, but on some occasions identifiable information will be collected, for example to look at care for a group of patients across GP and hospital services. The free text a doctor or nurse enters when you discuss an issue in a consultation will not be extracted (which may contain more personal or confidential information), just the codes that the doctor or nurse enters will be collected e.g. diagnoses, investigations etc.
Further information is available from the surgery or the surgery website (www.littledownsurgery.co.uk) where a patient information leaflet and Frequently Asked Questions document can be found.
You have a choice to opt out and not allow your information to be extracted from the practice system. You can either opt out of allowing your information to leave the practice, or allow it to be extracted by the Health and Social Care Information Centre but then not allow any data to leave the HSCIC secure system (e.g. for medical audit or research purposes).
If you would like to discuss these issues further please contact Emma, Practice Manager. - Patient Group Action Plan – Progress to Date
Emma talked through the attached Action Plan. Patient reiterated how important the phlebotomy (blood taking) service is to them and how much they would appreciate more blood being taken at the surgery or a community location. Waiting times at the hospital can be excessive, although people felt it did depend on what time of the day you went.
We also discussed the issue of what to do about patients who do not attend (DNA) their appointments. We now publicise the number of DNAs every month, split by doctor and nurse appointments as requested by the Patient Group. The surgery do need to consider whether we should write to people who regularly DNA, but Emma was anxious that the practice data is robust before we do that as she would hate to write to someone who actually had not DNA’ed.