Date of Meeting: Friday 3rd February 2023
Attendees:
Dr Brown | Christine Cain | GH | CC | MS | AS
Dr Brown discussed the changes within the Practice. Dr Burton, who was on rotation as a GP registrar has now left, and we have a new year 3 trainee called Dr Uwa. We have a new Physio called Paul Miller who works for the PCN and will be with us on a Monday and Tuesday each week. Thea Debonnaire is a new career nurse and Jade Hizzett is our new Young Persons Social Prescribing Link Worker.
If annual covid vaccinations are brought in it is likely we will continue to perform these in house like we do with the flu vaccinations, we had quite a poor uptake for flu and covid this year so we will try to improve on this. The pandemic is still ongoing, but we are operating in a Pre-pandemic manner. Patients are not required to wear a mask when attending the surgery unless they are coming into the surgery with coughs and colds.
Dr Brown mentioned a recent study by the Daily Mail on how well GP practices are performing in regard to face-to-face appointments and our practice had performed the highest of local practices at 83.48%, compared to a practice in London who scored 14%. We do still offer some telephone appointments as some patients prefer these.
Challenges we had such as increase in patient demand, staff shortages and illness are now improving. There are more on the day appointments available and covid infections rates are less frequent. We do however have issues with premises as we have more staff and not enough rooms. As Dr Brown is now a partner and Karen Neary is the Practice Manager, we are expecting a visit from CQC (Care Quality Commission) because of the changes.
The group asked why the wearing of masks had been dropped and it was explained that it was a government decision but that it was also patient preference.
The role of the physio is to be treated like a GP appointment he will examine, diagnose, and refer to physio at Peterlee.
MS, AS and CC all go private for their physio and wondered why physio isn’t offered in house. GH mentioned the increase in mental health problems, Dr Brown explained that there was an increase in things like personality disorders, ADHD and autism and there was up to a two year wait to be seen.
CC mentioned Andy’s man Club which is held every Monday at Horden Welfare Centre for men who need to talk about their problems, MS mentioned a group that meets at Blackhall and Dr Brown explained the role of the mental health service called Talking Changes.
The Group agreed that the Practice offer a very good service and the only complaint they had was the privacy issue at Peterlee reception and being able to hear conversations from the Nurses room in the waiting room although playing a radio in the waiting room has been introduced to try and remedy this problem.
All of the group at the meeting signed an attendance sheet and were happy for patient identifiable details to be added to the website in the meeting minutes.
Date of next meeting to be arranged.
