Minutes of the Riverside Medical Centre Patient Participation Group
Date: 1st November 2011
18.00-19.00
- Welcome from RMC
- Introductions Kate Jackson, Sharon Laing, Group participants
- Discuss patient survey
- Continuity of Care
- Signage/Advertising
- Appointments/system- esp late running apts
- Iplato – Text messaging service
Outcome
- Continue with patient surveys – Response rate low – Keep survey short – 3 questions. Consider posting surveys to patients
- Overall feeling high level service offered
- Patients prefer to see regular doctors and not locum doctors. We are continually monitoring the practice growth and recruiting new clinicians on a regular basis
- Patients very happy with appointment system for booking appointments on the day
- Text messaging service started at practice 1st November – appointment reminders automatically sent 2 days before date of appointment. The practice will now send review reminders, practice invites etc to patients via text messages. First day the practice received two cancellation requests for future appointments, One patient contacted surgery to book an appointment after receiving a text message regarding to contact the surgery to book an appointment regarding their results, pt contacted surgery within 5minutes of receiving the message
Areas for focus
1) To advertise more for the practice by leaflet dropping, attending local community meetings etc. Signage for practice to say ‘doctor’s surgery’ rather than medical centre. KJ will contact JH re local contacts- await room availability as changes to free up rooms for growth planned for future
2) Receptionist team to ask patients when booking appointments if there is a specific doctor they would like to see. When appointments are made to provide the patients with the name of the doctor/nurse they are booked with.
3) How to deal with Dr’s running late. Information added to TV screen in waiting area regarding appointment length times, informing patients that double appointments to be requested if patients require longer than a 10min appointment.
To consider sending text messages to patients to inform them the doctor is running behind – To be discussed at the practice meeting with the clinical team.
Practice to monitor the sessions to see if there is a pattern of when doctors run late eg. Mornings/afternoon/ certain days
More staff at reception desk at busier times, patients like interaction with the staff when arriving at the practice.
Next meeting:
Aiming first week February. Date TBC
Aim next meeting- Discuss minutes of previous meeting & identify themes for areas to focus on to improve our patients experience at RMC
Thank you to everyone who attended