Ongar Health Surgery

Patient Forum Annual Report 31st March 2015

Welcome to Ongar Health Centre Patient Forum Report. The purpose of this report is to inform our patients of the activity and outcomes of our Patient Forum to date.

The Ongar Patient Forum has continued to meet throughout 2014/15. The meetings are held once a quarter and are chaired by Mr Arthur Moody. The Forum is in the unique position of being representative of the patients of Ongar as a whole. There are plans this year to redefine the group so that the two individual practices of Ongar are able to feedback on their own practice issues but may remain together as a group to hear the topic and speaker. This will become easier when and if both practices are in the same building.

Below is the age/sex register of patients of Ongar Health Centre only. Carer, long-term conditions and ethnicity information is available on those patients who have chosen to provide us with the information. It is updated each time a new member joins. New patients joining the group are asked for their ethnicity on the application form to join the Patient Forum, however, it is entirely up to the patient as to whether they give this information or not. We aim to ensure that as many diverse groups as possible are included although there is clearly more work to do in this area.

Age/sex register of Ongar Health Centre patients as at 19.2.2015

Male Female Total< 16 990 951 194117-24 464 444 90825-34 454 495 94935-44 584 628 121245-54 781 803 158455-64 610 661 127165-74 594 619 121375-84 359 423 782Over 85 105 190 295Total 4941 5214 10155

79.6% of all our patients were seen between 1.4.2014 and 19.2.2015

Number of patients seen between 1.4.14 – 19.2.2015 and the number of appointments they generated

Patients Appts % of total Average no. of appts/patient< 16 1445 6227* 13.74% of all appointments 4.317-24 657 3064 6.76% of all appointments 4.625-34 698 3714 8.20% of all appointments 5.335-44 919 4631 10.22% of all appointments 5.045-54 1218 6111 13.49% of all appointments 5.055-64 1051 5926 13.08% of all appointments 5.665-74 1127 7815 17.25% of all appointments 6.975-84 746 6227 13.74% of all appointments 8.3Over 85 224 1575 3.47% of all appointments 7.0Total 8085 45290

*Childhood imms account for this higher number

Age/sex, carer and long-term conditions breakdown of Forum membership

Male Female Carer Long Term Conditions British< 1617-2425-34 135-44 145-54 1 1 255-64 265-74 5 12 375-84 4 6 1Over 85 1

We have continued to find ways to attract the under-represented practice groups. Information and application forms are included in all New Patient Registration Packs. When patients reach 16 years they are written to offering them a health check. This letter also includes an invitation to attend the Forum. Health Visitors are encouraged to give information to new mums.

Having a Patient Forum has helped improve communication around the services of the practice and, hopefully, has helped patients to understand the limitations of the practice and the wider Health Service. In particular, it gave us the opportunity to give information around the move from Bansons Lane to Ongar War Memorial Medical Centre, and to inform patients of staff changes. This type of information has formed part of the Practice Manager’s feedback at each meeting.

Partners of Ongar Health Centre have attended all meetings. Dr David Rogers has given a talk to the group about arthritis, and the Chronic Fatigue Service has also given a presentation. Dr Rob Gerlis attended to speak about the rôle of the CCG, commissioning and the future of the NHS and Dr Hugh Taylor spoke about cancer. All available presentations have been included in this report.

As with all voluntary groups, there are some people who attend regularly and others who are not able to. Nevertheless, there is strong email representation and the ‘virtual’ group is every bit as valuable as those who attend in person. Reception staff are continually asking patients for email and mobile phone numbers as a means of communicating to patients.

Agendas, minutes and presentations are available on the website and information is added to the patient information screen in the waiting room of Ongar Health Centre. There are also paper copies made available.

The Chair of the Forum and the Practice Manager from Ongar Health Centre communicate regularly and the Chair is a good source of local information. He often emails or phones with a query raised by a patient which the Manager responds to immediately.

From 1.4.2015 the Ongar Patient Forum is likely to split so that both practices in Ongar are individually represented. It is understood that Dr Luxman’s surgery will be relocating into OWMMC so it may be possible to continue to work collaboratively e.g. joint educational sessions, but then separate to individual meeting spaces to discuss areas of specific interest to each practice.

It is also envisaged that a more formal committee will be formed for Ongar Health Centre once this separation has happened.

Many Patient Forum members are active members of the CCG Forums and attend meetings. They use the Forum meeting as an opportunity to feedback relevant, local information.

The practice has done well according to the Friends and Family Test.

How likely are you to recommend our service to friends and family if they

needed similar care or treatment?

January 2015 February 2015 March 2015

Extremely likely 47 75

Likely 10 17

Neither likely or unlikely

Unlikely

Extremely unlikely

Don't know

Total number of patient responses 57 92

Minutes of 11th June 2014

Present: 42 representatives from Ongar Health Centre3 representatives from Ongar Surgery

Apologies: Dr Alex Phipps, Sheila Melvin, Doris Swan, Jill & Alex Sawkins, Brenda Evans, David Jackman.

The minutes of the previous meeting were accepted as being correct.

Matters arisingThere were on-going discussions around the provision of physiotherapy and podiatry services at OWMMC. It was agreed that, although the service at St. Margaret’s was very good, it would be lovely to have something nearer for at least one session a week. The issues of providing the service by the correct skill-mix of staff at the correct level of qualification were mentioned. Sue Sangster, Deputy Practice Manager at OWMMC, pointed out that the SEPT (South East Essex Partnership Trust) was due to have its contract renewed in August and so was unlikely to make any decisions about commissioning services until after this. Patients pointed out that the ageing population of Ongar and surround villages would indicate that there was a need. Arthur Moody (Chair of Forum) was asked to write again to the Director of Integrated Services at SEPT to reinforce patient feeling.

Topic for the evening – Arthritis – presented by Dr David Rogers, OHC Dr David Rogers gave a very interesting presentation on the various forms of arthritis followed by questions from the Forum. The PowerPoint presentation will be attached to these minutes.

News from Ongar Health CentreSue Sangster offered her thanks on behalf of the practice for the work done by the Ongar Millennium Society who have provided the contents in the display boxes around the practice. These will be changed every 2 months. Patients were encouraged to look at these interesting pictures and artefacts.The OMS have also offered to plant the atrium garden with poppies. They are looking for volunteers if anyone is interested.There have been some teething problems with the phones at the new surgery. Sue Sangster asked for everyone’s patience with this as the telephone engineers are working hard to resolve the glitches. As a matter of interest, Sue asked for a show of hands of patients who would prefer to have a queuing system on the phone as opposed to an engaged tone. Almost everyone preferred a queuing system which was in direct contrast to the feedback at the last meeting. There had also been some grumbles about the length of the menu offered when first calling, but Sue explained this was necessary in order to get the call to the correct person.Yvonne Pope, the new Practice Manager, introduced herself. She has been with the practice since 1.4.2014 but has been a Practice Manager for many years. She is keen to increase the diversity of the Patient Forum so that it is representative of all patients. The practice is expected to be able to report back to the CCG on the age/sex range of patients in the group, the ethnicity of patients and whether they were Carer’s or had long-term medical conditions. Yvonne explained that she was already contacting 16 year olds as they became responsible for their own health and would include information about the Patient Forum and would also let patients know when they registered. Reception staff are asking for current mobile numbers and email addresses of patients as she could then send a message via the clinical computer system to let patients know that minutes etc were available on the website. A new website will be available in 3 months’ time which is will be more interactive

and patient friendly. For those patients who do not use the internet, some paper copies of the minutes will be made available. There are also plans for a Patient noticeboard. Everyone will be welcome to the Patient Forum meeting but Yvonne will only be reporting on the OHC patients.OHC have new reception and admin staff members. None of the old staff have left but there are new faces around. Sue asked, again, that patients understand if the new staff do not currently have the expertise of existing staff and need to ask for help. The practice has also employed a Prescribing Clerk

Bus routeArthur Moody has met with TownLink buses and they are looking at the possibility of running a bus service – one bus an hour in each direction - to the practice between the hours of 9am – 3pm. They have been given permission to use the turning circle at the Leisure Centre. However, this is only for a trial period and, if the service is not felt to be used, then it will be withdrawn after 6 weeks. There has been a slight delay as the Highway Commission needs 56 day notice to start and/or stop a new service. Arthur was thanked for his work on this.

Mary Roles was introduced and spoke about Ongar and Villages Voluntary Care. This is a group of 48 volunteer drivers who can be available to take patients to hospital, dental, optician and GP appointments within a reasonable local area (no London Hospitals due to the time and distance involved). To request transport, patients call the telephone helpline number 01277 365363 and a co-ordinator will attempt to match them with a driver for their appointment. Three days’ notice is generally required. The driver is able to wait with the patient if they so wish. This is not a taxi service. However, donations from patients are encouraged in order to help with costs. The service gets a grant from Epping County Council. Drivers are reimbursed expenses of 0.50p/mile and have to complete a datasheet which includes mileage and time. All volunteer drivers have to provide references.

Mary ended her talk by asking Forum members to spread the word that more volunteers were needed.

AOBThe Roll of Honour from the original Ongar War Memorial Hospital cannot be located. It was suggested that the Essex Records Office is contactedA comment from the floor was that, in light of Yvonne’s comments, the time had come for the Patient Forum to become more organised and have a Committee. It was acknowledged that it was possibly now too much for one person and that Arthur Moody had done a sterling job to date, but now might be a time to review the situation. Arthur suggested having some suggestions and ideas to present at the next meeting, i.e. Constitution and Terms of Reference.A patient queried whether the toys from the old practice were going to continue to be used. Sue Sangster explained that there were strict Infection Control guidelines surrounding toys in a surgery. It was brought to the attention of the practice that the pedestrian gate from the parking area at the rear of the building was very heavy and difficult to manoeuvre. Yvonne agreed to get this looked at. (FYI – the hydraulic arm has now been removed which should make it lighter to open and close, and NHS Property Services are looking at a way of making this electronically operated).A patient asked whether the practice had applied for money to be open 8am-8pm every day. It was explained that this was not a bidding process but that it would be a contractual change if, and when, it happened but the practice had not been given any indication that this would change in the near future.Arthur Moody reported that David Jackman asked him to let the Patient Forum know that he had received full reimbursement from the practice.

Date and time of next meeting – 7.00pm, Wednesday 10th September 2014Ongar War Memorial Medical Centre

Minutes of 10th September 2014

ONGAR PATIENT FORUMMinutes of a Meeting held on September 10 at the Ongar War Memorial Health Centre

The chairman, Arthur Moody, welcomed people to the meeting.Apologies had been received from Doris Swann, Jenny and Mervyn Hinchcliffe, Brenda Evans, Gwen Hitcham, Les Riley and Yvonne Pope.Minutes of the Previous Meeting. (Agenda Item 1)These had been previously circulated and the chairman asked if they could be accepted as a true and accurate record of the last meeting held on Wednesday June 11. Amendments were made as follows: Dr Alex Phipps name and not as shown. In the report of Ongar and Villages Voluntary Care the number of volunteer drivers should be 26, not 48. The grant received is from the Epping Forest District Council not ECC as shown. In the report of Any Other Business it was stated that the Roll of Honour from the War Memorial Hospital could not be located. It was confirmed that this was not lost but in the care of the Essex Records Office. No date and time of this meeting was shown on the minutes. OPF member Les Field had died. The chairman agreed to write to his widow on behalf of the Forum. With these corrections the minutes of the previous meeting were approved.Matters Arising (Agenda Item 2) - None Presentation by Selina Ord and Donna (Agenda Item 3)The subject of the talk was Essex Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Service which has its headquarters at Southend University Hospital in Westcliffe-on-Sea. The Forum learned that this facility was relatively new and was previously centred at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford. Their aim was to provide the service across the whole of Essex. It was said that there was clearly a need for the service and 3,500 patients had been treated since its inception.It was explained that initially the aim of ECFSS was to confirm, or not, the preliminary diagnosis and take steps to improve the quality of patients’ lives.Donna spoke about the cause of the ailment which could arise through stress, fear, worry or fear, but that the cause was not restricted to these factors. Consultancy Assessments and Occupational Therapy would play a part in the treatment. It was pointed out that chronic fatigue is not like conventional work fatigue but, like ME, was a long-term unexplained fatigue. At the end of their presentation Selina and Donna said that they would be happy to answer questions. Some of these are listed, as follows: (a) Is a referral from one’s GP required? Answer: Yes. (b) With Chronic Fatigue is there an overlap of fatigue and Pain? Answer: It varies. (c) What is the waiting time between referral and treatment? Answer: Two months. (d) Is research being done on this subject? Answer: Yes, it’s on-going. (e) Is this a modern illness? Answer: No, it’s been around for years but the more stressful times in which we live has increased the number of people who suffer from the complaint. It was not recognized as an identifiable complaint until 35 years ago (f). Could it be that some of the patients who complained of this condition w ere in fact ‘malingerers’ seeking to avoid work? This question created some lively reactions but the Forum were told that this did happen sometimes.Selina and Donna were thanked for their visit and they then left the meeting.

Comments to/from the Practice. (Agenda Item 4) The chairman fielded questions from the floor and redirected some. The points raised were as follows: (g) Can something be done about the very large plate glass east window which made the waiting area too bright for comfort. The answer was in the affirmative and a colour filter is to be applied to reduce the glare. (h) What is wrong with the phone system here? It is hard to get through and frequently just disconnects? The answer, from Dr Taylor was “The telephone system isn’t ours. It came with the building and we share your criticisms It is embarrassing”. The meeting was advised that efforts are being made to improve the situation but that in the meantime patients should be aware that a ‘pip-pop’ signal is the equivalent of the more customary long bleeps and means that the number is engaged. (i) Is the Practice looking at the possibility of Consultancy by Email? In reply to this question Dr Taylor said there was an in-built difficulty in that patients using the system elsewhere often had problems in understanding the response and trying to interpret it. “I wouldn’t rush to embrace it” he said.Dr Taylor gave some further information about the Centre and said that the CCG were looking for tenants. He described a selective vaccination programme that was being adopted in which, this year, only those aged 70, 78 or 79 were being treated and he also mentioned that there was a rise in the number of patients with mental problems. There was also a reference to the GP Practice of Dr Luxman and whether her Practice was to be related to the OWM Medical Centre. The last topic of the evening was a re-run of the Physiotherapy debate in which the unanswered question was ‘Why does the NHS say that there is insufficient demand for a Physiotherapy Department to be re-opened at Ongar when in the days the hospital had a ’Physio’ department, patients were arriving, as one person put it, “by the bus-load”?. With a population that has risen since then it is a question which OPF members are not likely to let go away.

Minutes of Patient Forum meeting – 3.12.2014

Present: 21 members of Ongar Health Centre Practice6 members of Ongar Surgery

1. Apologies - Dr Alex Phipps, Dr Zia Yaqub, Sue Sangster, Alex Waplington, Mary Roles, Sally Foskett and Doris Swann

2. The minutes of the previous meeting were accepted as being correct.

3. There were no matters arising.

4. Dr Rob Gerlis, Chair, West Essex PCT, gave a detailed presentation on the current and future plans for health provision in West Essex. WECCG is a membership of 38 practices in three patches, Epping, Harlow and Uttlesford. They are comprised of individual practices undertaking joint working both formally and informally. The work of the CCG is to respond to changes in demand. They ‘commission’ (i.e. buy) hospital, community, medicines and mental health services. They do not currently commission dentistry, pharmacy services or specialist high cost services. SEPT (South Essex Partnership Trust) is a Foundation Trust who employs District Nurses, Health Visitors and Physiotherapists etc. WECCG is responsible for designing services for the future. They have a responsibility not to overspend their budget of £300million. In fact, they are required to come in with a surplus of £3million. This will not be possible this year. The expectation is that they will come in on budget this year but any deficit will carried forward into the following financial year.

Some of the challenges are that all GPs are Independent Contractors, contracted to the CCG to provide General Medical Services. They are all self-employed. All GPs (other than single-handed GPs) are in a Partnership, governed by Partnership law. Currently, each Partnership has to be dealt with individually by the CCG. Dr Gerlis reported that it costs around £112 per patient/year for patients to be seen as many times as they need by their GP. To make all GPs salaried is not affordable. However, West Essex GPs have formed a ‘not-for-profit’ company called Stellar Health which will bid for contracts to be undertaken by West Essex GPs. This is also a way of keeping the private sector from ‘muscling in’.

The highest WECCG spend is on hospitals care. Dr Gerlis spoke of the need to make sure that patient care is delivered by the most appropriate services i.e. need to make sure that hospital IS, in fact, the best place of care for each patient, or could they be managed by Primary Care? He raised the issue that hospitals were no longer big enough and that not every hospital could have its own centre of excellence; patients may have to travel further to receive expert care. The example he gave was that a patient may have to be sent to the Lister Hospital if they had a stroke for the first few, critical, days of care but could then be cared for more locally, nearer to home, rather than every hospital have a specialist Stroke Unit.

Integrated Care is the model WECCG are working towards. This means looking at patient care from the health and social care perspective. They are currently involved in a pilot project where the lead provider is SEPT for people with fraility issues. There are now MDT (Multi-Disciplinary Team) meetings each month involving GPs, Practice Nurses, District Nurses, Social Workers aligned to each practice, End Of Life practitioners etc. in an attempt to keep patients from being admitted to hospital.

It was agreed that there are problems recruiting and retaining community nursing staff. Ongar and Epping are high cost areas to live in which was felt to be one of the contributing factors. SEPT have employed Community Matrons who are able to prescribe and act as a liaison between all clinicians in a patient’s care in the community and who acts as a Case Manager.

Dr Gerlis went on to speak of the financial difficulties that Princess Alexandra Hospital is in. There are no quality issues there but PAH is facing the same problems as many other hospitals up and down the country. The closure of Welwyn Garden City Hospital A & E has impacted on PAH – as many as 40% of A & E attendees come from Herts.

5. Comments from the Practice presented by Yvonne Pope, Practice Manager

Dr Jonathan D’Souza will be joining the practice as a full-time partner on 1.4.2015. He is an experienced GP and is relocating to be closer to family and London.Dr Rebecca King is now on maternity leave for a year. She is being replaced for some sessions by Dr Malika Chandra. The practice is recruiting for the remaining sessions.Dr Frances Gilchrist has left the practice to work closer to her home in Herts. She has been replaced by Dr Rafaela PiresThere are two new members of the nursing team. Cate Bowles has joined us as Practice Nurse for 4 days a week and Kate Savage will be working 2 days a week as a Women’s Health Nurse. Jane Howe, our Senior Practice Nurse, will be reducing to 4 days a week in 2015 following a period of extended leave. Sandra Redmond will be replacing Jane whilst she’s away.Chris Duguid has joined the practice as IM & T ManagerAll GP practices will be undertaking the Friends and Family Test from 1.12.2014. This replaces the patient questionnaire of previous years and has already been used in hospitals. It asks 2 questions. The first one is the same in all practices – ‘Would you recommend this service to your Friends and Family?’ The second one is up to the individual practice and we have chosen ‘If not, why not?’ The questionnaire is available on our website, and random surgeries will be chosen each week to complete this too. The practice then has to report the results back to NHS England each month.Great news! The current, inefficient, telephone system will be replaced towards the end of December. Yvonne apologised for all the difficulties patients had experienced and mentioned how difficult it had been for staff here too. The new system will have a number of new features including a queueing system, recording all calls, and will offer ‘real time’ data to allow the practice to see how many calls are being handled and how long they take etc. Yvonne felt this that would help when recruiting for staff in the future as it would show when the busiest times are based on actual data. At this point, Yvonne mentioned the new data that was available on the website which showed how many wasted appointments there were each month, alongside some basic figures on practice workload.The current set-up of the Patient Forum does not match the requirements of the CCG. Ongar Patient Forum was set up long before practices were encouraged to develop their own Patient Participation Groups (PPGs) or Patient Reference Groups (PRGs) so, in many ways, Ongar Patient Forum were ahead of the curve. However, PPGs/PRGs have to be representative of each individual practice, they are required to engage with all sections of the practice population, and to show that they have tried to recruit members from under-represented groups. This could include changing the times of the meetings in order to make

it easier for carers or parents to attend. The PPG/PRG should meet annually with the practice to discuss the number and types of complaints the practice has received, they should decide 3 areas of priority they would like the practice to focus on as a result of the Friends and Family Test results, and are required to publish an annual report. YP had first raised this at the meeting in June when it was agreed that this could not be the work of only one person i.e. Arthur Moody. At that time, a couple of volunteers had come forward to help but, sadly, poor health has prevented them from continuing. Yvonne told the Forum that every new patient who joins the practice is given information about the Forum and its meetings and patients are able to join via the website. Yvonne asked for suggestions as to how this could be taken forward without spoiling the excellent work the Forum currently does. There was a suggestion from the floor that the practice could produce a Newsletter, but Yvonne was keen to promote the idea that this is, in fact, a Patient Forum and not a Practice one. In her previous practice, the Newsletter had been undertaken by the PRG with factual contributions from the practice. It was agreed that the group needs to think about how it can achieve the requirements of the CCG. Arthur Moody reported that he had been trying to contact Dr Luxman’s Manager, Tracy Beckley, so that both practices could discuss this but it was proving difficult as Tracy only worked part-time. Yvonne offered to send an email to all OHC patients asking if there was anyone interested in a) joining the group and b) becoming involved as part of a committee.

6. Physiotherapy – Arthur Moody reported that he had been in touch with the Head of Physiotherapy again who had agreed to undertake a full review of the demand on the service from Ongar and Epping patients. A decision on whether Physiotherapy services will be offered at OWMMC will be based on these findings which are expected to be completed early 2015.

7. AOB - Johnny Skillicorn-Aston joined the meeting to discuss the use of the 111 service. He explained that this should be used when you need medical help that is not an emergency. There were some comments from the floor that operators only told you to go to your GP anyway. Johnny explained that problems were assessed against protocols and were then directed maybe to a GP or a hospital, were given a return call by a clinician or offered self-help advice. 111 is available 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

Johnny encouraged patients to take better care of themselves and to have a well-stocked First Aid cupboard and to ensure they had up-to-date and sufficient supplies of their repeat medications.

There is a publicity campaign to encourage people to post pictures of themselves on Facebook showing whatever it is they use to keep themselves healthy (a large Scotch was one suggestion!) He has left a supply of fridge magnet, leaflets and posters in the practice for patients and asked that they display these at any clubs or groups they belonged to.

Date and time of next meeting – 11th March 2015 at 7.00pm

Phil Morley – CEO of Princess Alexandra Hospital may be invited. There was also a suggestion that someone from the CQC (Care Quality Commission) could be invited.

Minutes from Ongar Patient Forum 11.3.2015

Chair: Arthur Moody

Present: 24 representatives of Ongar Health Centre3 representatives of The Ongar Surgery

1 Apologies for absenceDr David Rogers, Doris Swann, Mary Roles, Jenny & Mervyn Hinchcliffe, Doreen and Edwyn Gilmore, Pam and Bobby Dixon.

2 Minutes of the last meetingThe minutes of the previous meeting were accepted as being correct.

3 Ongar Patient Forum – the futureAt the last meeting there were discussions about the future of the Ongar Patient Forum. Historically, this had been representative of all patients of Ongar. However, under the Enhanced Service Patient Participation guidance, Patient Participation Groups (PPGs) or Patient Reference Groups (PRGs) should be representative of each individual practice, not combined practices. The Ongar Surgery asked for information to be circulated to their patients who attended the meeting to let them know that they would be setting up their own, virtual, patient representation group. Forms for this group would be available on their website from 16.3.2015.

Arthur Moody expressed the suggestion that, should Dr Luxman relocate to OWMMC, it might be possible for both practices to meet to hear an invited speaker, but then separate to discuss topics or issues relevant to the patients of the individual practices – in line with the Enhanced Services requirement. He also asked for volunteers to help develop the Ongar Health Centre group. Anyone who is interested can, in the first instance, contact Yvonne Pope – Practice Manager.

4 Cancer – Symptoms and CureDr Hugh Taylor gave a talk on the different types of cancers, and the increases and decreases in prevalence. Unfortunately, he was unable to transmit the presentation via the waiting room screen so the slides are attached to these minutes.

5 Physiotherapy reviewFollowing a long and detailed review of the Physiotherapy Service by the people of Ongar, Pam Sabine (Director of Essex and Suffolk Integrated Services St Margaret’s Epping) the results show that there are insufficient numbers to support losing 2 physiotherapists to offer a satellite service at OWMMC. For health and safety reasons, there would need to be 2 physiotherapists here and this would mean that the hydrotherapy pool at Epping could not be used as this would reduce the required cover. Given the low numbers of patients who would benefit at OWMMC and the high numbers of patients who benefit from the hydrotherapy pool, this could not be justified. Therefore, in conclusion, no physiotherapy services will be coming to OWMMC.

6 Comments from the Practice Practice Manager, Yvonne Pope, updated the group on the following points;

Dr Jonathan D’Souza had joined the practice on 2.3.2015 as a Partner but, for personal and family reasons, had withdrawn from the partnership a week later. Yvonne now has an advert out to replace him. If someone is already working as a Partner, they may have to give up to 6 months’ notice. In order to help cover this shortfall, Yvonne has also advertised for a 6 month locum to help with capacity whilst the practice recruits.Dr Martha Hilland has joined the practice as a Salaried GP. She is covering the maternity absence of Dr Rebecca King.The practice currently also has a receptionist vacancy. They had thought they had successfully appointed someone but she got a better job offer the day before she was due to start. Yvonne will be interviewing again next Tuesday. From 1.2.2014, all practices had to take part in the Friends and Family Test. Yvonne reported that OHC had been doing very well with 148 responses in total so far. Of these, 121 patients were ‘extremely likely’ to recommend the surgery to Friends and Family, and 27 patients were ‘likely’ to recommend the surgery to Friends and Family. No-one had said they were ‘neither likely nor unlikely; unlikely or extremely unlikely’ to recommend the surgery which was very pleasing.As part of the Annual Report (which is another requirement of the Enhanced Service for Patient Participation) Yvonne had audited the complaints she had received between 1.4.2014 – 11.3.2015. There had been a total of 17 written and verbal complaints. Yvonne admitted that there had been a greater number of grumbles but she usually managed to deal with these at the time. The complaints were more formal.Following on from this, Yvonne reported that 80% of all patients of OHC had been seen in the previous 12 months i.e. 8000 patients had each been seen. She then presented the following figures of how this had been broken down. These figures will also be available in the annual report which will be both on the website and in paper form in the surgery by 31.3.2015.

Age/sex register of Ongar Health Centre patients as at 19.2.2015

Male Female Total< 16 990 951 194117-24 464 444 90825-34 454 495 94935-44 584 628 121245-54 781 803 158455-64 610 661 127165-74 594 619 121375-84 359 423 782Over 85 105 190 295Total 4941 5214 10155

79.6% of all our patients were seen between 1.4.2014 and 19.2.2015

Number of patients seen between 1.4.14 – 19.2.2015 and the number of appointments they generated

Patients Appts % of total Average no. of appts/patient< 16 1445 6227* 13.74% of all appointments 4.317-24 657 3064 6.76% of all appointments 4.625-34 698 3714 8.20% of all appointments 5.335-44 919 4631 10.22% of all appointments 5.045-54 1218 6111 13.49% of all appointments 5.055-64 1051 5926 13.08% of all appointments 5.665-74 1127 7815 17.25% of all appointments 6.975-84 746 6227 13.74% of all appointments 8.3Over 85 224 1575 3.47% of all appointments 7.0Total 8085 45290

*Childhood imms account for this higher number

7 Any other business

Another patient asked why prescriptions could not be collected from the ground floor. Both Yvonne and Alex Waplington (Reception Co-ordinator) explained that this was both for reasons of safety and manpower. If a prescription was not available, there was no-one else downstairs able to go and search for this whereas, on the first floor, more staff were available.The phone system is undergoing some changes. The options will be altering shortly so patients were advised to listen carefully before making a selection.An Ongar chemist has made an application to open a pharmacy at OWMMC. The practice has also applied as they feel it would benefit their patients rather than having to go back into Ongar for their prescriptions.A patient asked if the League of Friends could supply a manual blood pressure machine to each doctor at OHC in case they visited his wife. Yvonne explained that these machines were a matter of personal preference for clinicians, but that she would consider this and ask the doctors.

Date and time of next meeting for Ongar Health Centre10th June 2015 at 7.00pm

The Ongar Surgery patients to be advised by their own practice of their next meeting.