Patient Participation Group – West Meon Surgery

The surgery has a just relaunched its Patient Participation Group (PPG) following COVID. This will provide a voice for patients on local health related matters. It will be a forum for patients to raise items of interest or concerns to us so we can improve our services. Our PPG is open to all patients who are registered at West Meon Surgery across all age groups, backgrounds and health conditions who come together to canvas our patients on ways we can try to improve our services. We will ask patients some questions from time to time such as what you think about our opening times or the quality of the care or service you received. However, no personal health matters or complaints about services will be discussed – these must be raised with the Practice Manager separately.

We produce a quarterly newsletter for our patients as our virtual PPG. The latest newsletter is here:

West Meon Surgery Patient Participation Group Newsletter – December 2024

Flu and COVID Autumn 2024 Vaccination Campaign

Our Autumn 2024 seasonal vaccination campaign has concluded with use administering 653 influenza vaccines and 649 COVID vaccinations. This represents about 69% of our 65 years and over population being vaccinated and 45% of our eligible patients aged 64 years and under.

We also are commissioned to vaccinate our 2-3 year olds against influenza and have successfully vaccinated 48% of our cohort to date.

Poppy appeal

We are delighted to report that our Royal British Legion poppy appeal 2024 raised £16.10. Thank you to all those who bought a poppy from West Meon Surgery.

Macmillan Coffee Morning 2024

In September we hosted a Macmillan Coffee Morning with a sale of cakes to staff and visitors to West Meon Surgery. As a result of everyone’s kind donations, we raised £215 for Macmillan Cancer.

Recruitment

We are currently looking to recruit an additional Care Co-ordinator to support our current Care Co-ordinators, Ciaran and Katie. This is always a difficult time of year to recruit with applicants’ focussing more on Christmas than a new job.

Ease of access

On average, in the last quarter we received 2658 telephone calls per month. The average time it took us to answer your call was 49 seconds. Nine callers opted to use our callback function rather than continue to hold.

Each week, on average, we have received 4 e-consults from patients. This is a really easy tool to use to submit concerns you have about your health and is accessible via a link from our website. You will hear back from us within 2 working days, and it may be either a clinician responding or administrator that has been asked to respond.

Our “did not attend” appointment rate was very low over the quarter at 0.2% of appointments which is good news as it means that not many appointments are being wasted by patients not turning up for them. However, we would always ask you to let us know they are unable to come so we can offer any appointments that become free to other patients.

Winter Pressures

Hampshire & Isle of Wight ICB have commissioned GP practices to offer additional appointments to help with winter pressures and more patients becoming unwell with respiratory illnesses. We are taking part in this initiative and offering more appointments specifically for respiratory illness. If you are unwell and suffering with respiratory illness, please telephone us.

Suspected Urinary Tract Infections

If you suspect you have a urinary tract infection, called UTI for short, please telephone us and let us know your symptoms. If we feel a sample is necessary, we will ask you to bring one in. Unfortunately, we will no longer accept unsolicited urine samples at reception or within the surgery.

To read more about UTIs and symptoms, please seen the NHS website and follow links to Urinary tract infections (UTIs).

If you are female and between the ages of 18-65 and not pregnant, your local pharmacy will be able to help you with your suspected UTI and they should be your first port of call.

When treating UTIs, antibiotics are not always needed or effective. The most appropriate treatment will be determined by the Pharmacist you speak to.

Travel Immunisation Appointments

If you are travelling abroad and would like to know what immunisations you need, West Meon Surgery can advise you and arrange for you to have these vaccinations safely.

To begin this process, fill in our travel assessment form found by following this link: Travel Vaccinations – West Meon Surgery and return it to the practice. You must allow at least 6 weeks to be fully vaccinated. Once you have submitted your form, a qualified travel practitioner will review your form and decide on a plan.

Once we have a plan, we will call you to arrange a suitable appointment for you. You will be informed of any charges for vaccinations before your appointment takes place.

Feedback Kiosk

Please continue to give us feedback about our service using our feedback kiosk. This allows you to quickly let us know how we performed when you came to see us.

Booking appointments

Adult patients must book their own appointments in order to protect their privacy. Only in exceptional circumstances will we allow someone to book an appointment on behalf of another adult.

Why do we ask why you want an appointment?

Some patients have asked why our staff are asking why they need an appointment with a GP. The purpose of this is so the clinician is able to triage their appointment list and ensure that patients with the most clinically urgent matters are spoken to earlier in their clinics. However, if the matter is private, we do respect that you may wish to decline.

Appointments available “on the day”

GP appointments that are available “on the day” are designed for acute or urgent matters only. It is important that we ensure we have capacity to look after patients who are acutely unwell or need medical assistance urgently without having lengthy delays for a clinician to make contact. We therefore use routine appointments for matters that are routine or chronic but where the patient will face no harm waiting for a few days to speak to a doctor or clinician. The average wait time for a routine appointment is 5 days for one of the Partners and less if you are happy to speak or see one of our other GPs.

Consent update

We continue our programme to update and record patient consent. This means you may be asked for consent to be formally given to us by a patient who wishes another person to order medication, book appointments or discuss medical matters with a clinician on behalf of our patient. We believe in people having the right to privacy when it comes to their healthcare, and we will not discuss a person’s healthcare with anybody without permission. This includes married couples or parents with children who are old enough to decide if they want to have an advocate speak on their behalf.

As a small rural practice, we are very aware that changes to information governance legislation needs to be enacted but in a way that detracts the least from our place in the community. We have introduced a form which allows you to quickly and concisely let us know if you would like somebody to discuss things on your behalf or order medication. You can download it from our website or collect it from us in the surgery.

Once we have the form returned to us, we will upload it to your notes to make sure we are only speaking to someone you are happy for us to speak to.

New Look Website

We have just completed an update of our website to ensure that it is accurate and works effectively to enable all patients to access its contents. We have also adopted the NHS blue although have retained our snowdrop logo.

Patient Participation Group

We have received an overwhelming response to our invitation for patients to join our Patient Participation Group which is relaunched after COVID. We will select at random a total of 16 patients who have indicated their interest. Our first meeting will be held in January 2025.

Dispensary Opening Hours

Day	Morning Open	Morning Close	Afternoon Open	Afternoon Close
Monday	8am	1pm	2pm	4pm
Tuesday	8am	1pm	2pm	4pm
Wednesday	8am	12.30pm	2pm	4pm
Thursday	8am	1pm	2pm	4pm
Friday	8am	1pm	2pm	4pm