Latest Patient Board Meeting Minutes

Wednesday 9th of April 2025

Full meeting minutes are available upon request, this is a summary of the discussions.

Update on Services

The COVID-19 Spring Vaccine Booster season has begun. The surgery held a clinic on Friday the 4th and Saturday the 5th of April. To date 55% of those aged 75 years and over and 37% of those who are immunocompromised have received the vaccine. Mop-up clinics continue to be held in the coming weeks. The Board provided positive feedback following their experiences at the clinic.

The Practice triage system is bespoke to our surgery. We are aware that some Primary Care services have moved to a model called ‘Total Triage’. This only allows for the booking of appointments on the day (both routine and urgent appointments). It was reviewed as an option by Westbury-On-Trym Primary Care Centre but declined at the time to support patients to book routine appointments in advance. If plans alter/are reviewed again to change and adopt a different tirage system in the future, is will be discussed with the Board.

Transport

WoTSoc (Westbury-on-Trym Society) will shortly circulate their discussion paper citing suggestions as to how best to respond to the expanding housing developments and the impact of traffic growth along the A4018.

The proposed charges to the car park outside the surgery will progress to the next stage, a traffic regulation order (TRO). During this time the plans will be available for comment during a 3 week consultation period.

The Patient Board and WoTSoc’s involvement in the car park charging proposals has been valuable and have helped secure a free first hour and ensures that this will be available to those who are not in a position to use digital applications.

Digital Inclusion

The Board reflected on the workshops held last year. The funding for these workshops has now come to an end. It was agreed that the workshop approach was not wholly successful, and the provision of one-to-one support would perhaps be a more successful approach both to maintain confidentiality and to provide speedy support.

The Board questioned what ‘success’ looks like and it was suggested an increase uptake of the NHS app and patients correctly booking online appointments. It was clarified that routine GP appointments remain unavailable to online booking due to the number of incorrect bookings that were received when we tried it previously.

Some of the benefits of digital inclusion include:

test results can be viewed in detail and speedily
appointments with the surgery and hospitals can be checked
clinical letters can be seen
it is cost effective and does not involve the same costs as e.g. text messaging and letters.

It was agreed that the Board would like to set-up a working group to explore supporting Digital Inclusion further.

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being explored within a healthcare setting. This includes the recording of consultations to produce automated notes for medical records. This will be explored by 2 GPs at the surgery in the coming weeks before expanding to a wider practice wide trial for 6-9 months.

PPG Involvement Plan 2025 – 2026

The Patient Board Policy was reviewed and agreed by the Board. Those not in attendance will be provided with the opportunity to sign the Confidentiality agreement at the next meeting.

Digital Inclusion had already been agreed as a priority for 25/26 in the previous agenda item.

The Board also confirmed that the sharing of the minutes (anonymised) on the Surgery Website should continue and is now standard practice rather than a working priority for 2025/26.

The Board discussed other possible priorities:

The use of the word ‘urgent’. The surgery, uses the term to relate to clinical matters but is often used by patients for personal circumstances i.e. something is seen as urgent because someone is going on holiday and needs i.e. a letter/vaccine. Often these things are not clinically urgent and can be sourced elsewhere. The Board agreed to respond to this and support patients to use the term appropriately. As an initial step the board will be provided with examples.
Discussion took place as to the meaning of the word ‘Care Navigator’. It is not clear to all that this was a re-branding of the reception team to account for the training they have received in patient triage. It was highlighted that if attendance is sporadic (as is often the case if someone is generally well), this information may not be known to them and consequently it appears new and confusing.
Discussion around the wider context of channels of communication for both the surgery and patients and the possible need for a diagram to aid clear communication to support patient care.

Using the above, it was suggested that we would like to focus on patient/surgery communication this year and a second working group may be warranted. This can be explored further at our next meeting.

The need to support patient confidentiality at the front desk, when a Patient has a private and personal concern, was also highlighted. The surgery does have a side room available, and the Care Navigators are trained in supporting confidentiality. This will be discussed further though to see if any improvement can be made.

It was agreed to be included in the minutes that the Patient Board are supportive of Westbury-on-Trym Primary Care Centre and recognise the difficulties within the NHS services as a whole.

Surgery Phone Message

The Board provided positive feedback on the current phone message. Some provided feedback via e-mail as they could not attend in person. Some commented that the call back function on the phone system worked well.

Patient Newsletter

It was suggested that a day-in-the life of various roles at the surgery would be beneficial, for example, a GP, Pharmacist and Care Navigator.

AOB

It was questioned if ‘self-help’ is a clear enough title on the surgery website and if ‘other services’ might be better. It was clarified that the surgery website connects to a widder NHS self-care platform that we cannot edit or amend.
It was mentioned that the screens in our waiting room are difficult to read. Unfortunately, they are not easily moved and funds and resources are restricted. Possible reconfiguration of the waiting area will be explored though to make them more widely visible to waiting patients.

The Patient Board will next meet on 9th of July 2025.

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