Patient Group

Brixton & Clapham Primary Care Network

• Patient Group Meeting
• Thursday July 17th at 2pm
• Zoom meeting

1. Welcome/Introductions.
2. General overview from the surgeries and PCN – Chris 
3. Updates from notes of last meeting- Citizens UK meetings - housing and health discussion
4. AOB
5. Presentation on use of the NHS App- Shannon
6. Dates for next meetings:

• September 25th in person
• November 20th – Zoom 
• Zoom meeting link
• Meeting ID: 816 1149 8122 
• Passcode: JKg9WX 

Notes from Patient Group Meeting

Present:

Jennie Parker, Shannon McAree, Siobhan Coffey, Joy Wilson, Nicola Kingston, Irma Ennis, Christine Jacobs, Stacia Bolton Borenstein, Andrea Gatiss, Maureen Simpson, Jenny Cobley, Kathy Butcher.

Apologies: Lynda Graham, Abigail Oyedele, Funke Ogbede, Peter O’Connell. 

1.    Welcome/Introductions

• Nicola welcomed everyone to the meeting and asked everyone to introduce themselves and share their favourite snack!

2.    General overview from the surgeries and PCN- Jennie Parker

• HGP have had an IT upgrade over the last week. All computers have been replaced, which happened during the normal working week and during clinics. 
• PMC will have their IT upgrade soon.
• Slightly ‘calmer’ time of year to think forward and plan care for the coming year.
• Patients with long term conditions are being recalled for their annual reviews.
• We are reviewing the NHS requirements and looking at how we can improve our systems.
• The 2 areas where the focus will be on this year are access (how we respond to requests for appointments, queries etc) and neighbourhood (working better with those in the community.
• The 3 groups Lambeth wants us to focus: frail/housebound, children/young people with lots of needs and people with 3+ long term conditions.
• Reminder of how appointments can be booked: phoning, online (accurx) and walk in. Hospital waiting times are affecting GP work and appointment availability. Patients are having to consult with GPs several times whilst they wait for secondary care services/surgery.

3.    Staffing update for Clapham Park GP re: housing:

• A new full-time Independent Prescribing Pharmacist arriving in August.
• An additional full-time 2nd year GP Registrar arriving in August
• An additional GP session (a session is half a day of GP time) scheduled to start later this year. 1 additional session in September and 4-6 sessions in October (depending on staff turnover). This has been planned with the expectation that new patients will register from the flats on Clarence Avenue.
• We review our patient list each month, and please be re-assured that we will recruit additional GPs if we receive more patient registrations than expected. Although, there seems to be continual delays with those flats so I expect we are likely to be overstaffed, rather than understaffed in 2025. It takes around 4 months to recruit a new clinician, and we can use locum clinicians in the interim if we are understaffed.
• We have had provisional funding approved to do a small building project at 72 Clarence Avenue which will create an additional consultation room for our patients. We expect this to be completed in 2025. This will help us to accommodate additional patients without the need for a branch site.

4.    Clapham Park Cube

• Our advice and wellbeing drop in is at the Cube every Thursday from 10am-12pm.
• We currently have around 10 regulars who join us weekly.
• For the last 4 months we have focused on diabetes and from June-September the first Thursday of every month will focus on chronic pain.
• Patients living with chronic pain can attend with carer/support person and a GP will be in attendance to answer any queries.
• We expect the focus after September will be on hypertension

5.    Citizens UK

• Abigail is working on a bid for a pilot on housing/housing letters. With the hope of sharing more advice and education on the area.
• GP Practices are generally not writing housing letters.
• The next assembly is on 3rd June, 6-8pm in Peckham

6.    Upcoming events

• Cervical cancer awareness - Thursday 19th June at Clapham Park Cube, 12-13:30.
• Health awareness day - Saturday 12th July at St James Church, Park Hill. SW4 9PB

Next meeting:

• Thursday 17th July at 2pm via Zoom.
• 25th September (in person at Hetherington Group Practice), 20th November (Zoom).