Patient Newsletter Summer 2023

BACK TO MAIN INDEX

Welcome to the Summer 2023 edition of our patient newsletter. It certainly has been another busy year with a dramatic increase in our registered patient numbers.

As our practice continues to grow at an unprecedented rate, we are ever thankful for your understanding and patience when dealing with our staff who are, as ever, striving to provide the best service and care available to you.

Meet The Team

My name is Hannah, I am the Operations Manager here at Pinhoe and Broadclyst Medical Practice.

I worked in General Practice for 20 years, having started in reception all those years ago to becoming an Operations Manager.

I have seen a lot of changes over the years.

I enjoy providing a service for patients and making sure we deliver the best service we can.

Outside of work you will find me with my two spaniels. I also have a cat.

I am a Run Director and part of the core team at my local parkrun.

Team News

We said a very sad goodbye to Dr Katharine Quinton who left us on the 24th May, she will be greatly missed but we all join in wishing her the very best for her path ahead and thank her wholeheartedly for her commitment to the practice and her patients. Dr Susanne King took over Dr Quinton’s patient list from the 26thJune. Dr King is an experienced GP who comes to us from a local surgery.

Congratulations to Dr Natalie Lewis who became a partner of the practice from the 1st June 2023.

Congratulations to Dr Emily Hay and family on the birth of their beautiful baby girls in June. Dr Heather Brook is covering Dr Hay’s patients for the duration of her maternity leave.

Dr Rafik is sadly leaving the practice at the end of July and his patient list will be shared amongst other GPs. Patients will hear from us shortly with the name of their new named GP.

To assist with the increase in patient numbers we have had a huge recruitment drive of 15 new members of staff to include Administrators, Care Coordinators, Patient Services Administrators, GPs, Nursing staff and a Paramedic. We welcome them all and look forward to building a strong team together to give an even greater service to our patients.

New Telephone System

Our new system has been up and running for almost a year now. Unlike our old system, patients are advised when calling the position they are in the queue, if this is position 4 or more you are offered a call back option and the system will log a call back for you with a Patient Service Administrator as soon as one becomes available (i.e. you won’t lose your place in the queue). If you miss that call back and you ring in again the system will automatically place your call at the front of the queue. All calls are recorded and monitored for training purposes.

Patient Participation Panel

Join our PPP Group - Would you like to have a say about the services we provide?

The Pinhoe and Broadclyst Medical Practice wants to hear your views. Questions/enquiries might be about:

The services we provide and any proposed changes.
Setting our priorities for the future.
Helping to agree questions for wider patient surveys.

The Practice Patient Panel (PPP) was established in July 2011. This was first set up as a ‘virtual group’ with correspondence conducted using email. At one point, membership rose to well over 60.

In 2015, a number of members expressed a wish to start holding face-to-face meetings. An Open Meeting was held in November 2015, with invited speakers from other local PPPs in attendance. It was agreed we continue to meet, with the first of our new regular meetings taking place in January 2016. The PPP have met regularly since then until the pandemic struck. The meetings have started back up again, virtually for the time being, on a quarterly basis.

If you would like to join, please contact us via the PPP page or pop in and provide your details to a patient services administrator and we will add your email address to our contact list.

CPCS – Community Pharmacy Consultation Service

Our practice signed up to a service called the Community Pharmacy Consultation Service a few months ago and has been very successful.

With certain ailments, it may be possible to get the help you need from a Pharmacist. When you call the surgery, after discussion with the Patient Services Administrator, you may decide that a personal consultation, either in person or on the telephone with the Pharmacist will be the help you need.

Our Patient Services Administrator will take some details and send a referral to a Pharmacy of your choice, providing they have agreed to provide this service.

The pharmacist will then contact you that day and offer a telephone or in-person consultation to discuss your needs. They will suggest treatment if appropriate.

After consultation they will refer you back to a GP if that’s the best course of action.

Broadclyst Dispensary

From Monday 3rd April 2023, our Broadclyst Dispensary will open throughout the day from 8:30am to 6pm (except Mondays 1pm to 2pm, normal practice closing).

The telephone will continue to stay off between 12pm and 2pm.

Dogs in the Surgery

After a recent significant event, please be aware that other than registered and licensed assistance dogs with the relevant harness, no other dogs will be permitted into either practice. The owner will be asked to leave them tied up outside. This protects our staff and patients some of whom have a fear or allergy to dogs as well as adheres to our infection control policy.

Message from Dr Hamish Duncan

As you will all be aware there has been a whole host of new buildings built within a stone’s throw of the practice over the past 5 to 10 years.

Expansion continues apace with the current Exeter Local plan having minimal impact, the East Devon local plan having more of an impact with the suggestion of 175 houses in Broadclyst and another new town on the periphery of our practice area, with the preferred of 3 sites being between Crealy and Exeter Airport. We now have almost 17,000 patients, a jump from 14,000 just two years ago.

The practice is full to bursting, and with the pressures on staffing across all areas this is combining to make the job ever more difficult. We are working with local councillors and health authority to try and address this, but the wheels turn very slowly. Small changes will be made incrementally whenever we can. We still need to address the quality and standards of the nursing rooms, toilets, medical records, and the heating–or lack of–in various parts of the practice, and of course we know we need more space.

We continue to look at all options available to us–hence the creation of the remote rooms. Any suggestions are welcome and every time we have the means to proceed with a build project, no matter how large, we will keep the team and our patients informed.

Our latest project has been the reception desk area at Pinhoe. We have no funding for expansion and therefore have had to be creative with repurposing our space. We are asking you, our patients, to write to your local MP to voice your concerns regarding the level of new housing locally with no funding for existing services to expand in order to cater to this growing population. Our list size is increasing by 150 patients per month, and we need extra staff for these patients, but we have no room for more staff with our current configuration. What we really need, and have been asking for, is for funding for a double storey extension to the rear on Pinhoe Surgery to create additional clinical and administrative workspace.

In the meantime, we’ve recruited 15 more team members in the past three months, and we need space for them to work from. We decided to use a relatively unused area of our waiting room for a reception pod to help us to utilise our back-office space with many more desks added for our growing Patient Services Administrator team to be able to answer telephone call and emails and for clinicians to hot-desk from.
We have purchased new chairs for the waiting room and have moved the chairs away from the new desk area as far as possible. We are also exploring the option of music to compensate for the quietness of the waiting room at times.

Practice Parkrun

Several staff from the practice took part in a special ‘Parkrun’ at Killerton on 8th July to celebrate the 75th birthday of the NHS. We are very grateful that there is no ‘after’ photo as it was a hot and hilly adventure! We are now signed up to be a parkrun practice, why don’t you come and join us one Saturday? 9am at Killerton, £2 for parking (free if you are a National Trust member). You can walk, jog or run Parkrun so go at your own pace, see you there!

Practice Boundary Change

The requested change to our practice boundary has been accepted and therefore, as of 1st May, it no longer includes Cranbrook. There is a large, detailed map in the patient waiting area to highlight the boundary. All patients currently registered with us and living in Cranbrook will remain our patients at their current address, this boundary change applies to new patients and those moving to an address outside of our boundary (even if this is a Cranbrook to Cranbrook change).

New Reception Desk and Patient Pod

You will notice when you visit the surgery there have been some changes recently with the addition of a new reception desk within the waiting room.

You may still use the self-checking in screen as normal. We are sure you will find the area much more accessible and our Patient Services Administrators are looking forward to being able to see the waiting area more easily.

A new patient pod has been installed in the Pinhoe waiting area. This enables patients, without clinical supervision, to perform their own checks such as blood pressure, weight, pulse etc. which are then instantaneously updated on to your patient record and can be immediately viewed by the doctors and nurses.

We also have a patient pod area in the Broadclyst waiting area, at this site, you need to write your readings onto the form provided in the pod area and hand it in at reception. It is not a replacement for your doctor or nurse, but a helpful addition to the practice you can use at a time to suit you.

New Recall Process

We have reviewed our recall process for long-term condition management and aligned it with patients’ birth months.

We have had to catch up with April – June birthdays and are now calling each patient in annually during their birth month for their review.

The purpose of the new system is to stagger the reviews across the year and to also, wherever possible, combine reviews, so, for example, if a patient has a history of a stroke and hypertension, they will just be called to attend one appointment to cover both.

This may mean that some patients are being called when they have been seen as recently as March, but we don’t want to wait until their birth month comes around again, we’d rather see you twice in 12 months then wait almost 24 months.

Chaperones

The practice is committed to providing a safe and comfortable environment for all patients.

All patients are entitled to have a chaperone present during any consultation, examination or procedure.

Clinicians may advise patients that a chaperone is necessary during any intimate examination; this is to safeguard both the clinician and you, the patient.

Staff members have received appropriate training to act as chaperones.

Family and friends are not permitted to act as chaperones as they do not have the knowledge required or the necessary training.

Published: Jul 18, 2023