Sandringham Medical Centre
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Practice News

Publication of GP Net Earnings

All GP practices are required to declare the mean earnings (e.g. average pay) for GPs working to deliver NHS services to patients at each practice.

The average pay for GPs working in Sandringham Medical Centre in the last financial year was £46230.59 before tax and National Insurance. This is for 3 full time GPs and 3 part time GPs.

Patient Participation Group

Patients from the practice meet once every other month to discuss any updates and changes to the service. The meeting takes place at 1pm on the second Wednesday of the month. If you would like to join the group, please ask at reception.

Your views (March 2015)

Friends and Family test

We have been running the friends and family test in the practice since December 2014. If you are in the practice please complete one of the questionnaires available in the reception. Your feedback and suggestions are important to us. It is just 2 short questions and all responses are anonymous.

We discussed the results of the 2014/2015 Friends and Family tests with our PPG in March 2015. From the results, 3 priority areas were identified and agreed with the group. These are listed below:

Quarterly PPG newsletter - Plan to produce a quarterly newsletter. Detailing any changes in the practice and general did you know information about the practice to keep patients updated. This will be uploaded to the practice website and paper copies available in the waiting room

1 Problem per appointment - Feedback from a patient FFT was that they had waited 25 minutes to see a GP and have had to wait previously, patient thought it was unacceptable. We have discussed this in clinical meeting. It was agreed that GP can only safely deal with 1 problem per 10 minute appointment. GP will reinforce this information at appointments and patients with several problems may be asked to make another appointment. This is advertised in the waiting rooms, on the TV and in every consultation room.

Info available in the waiting area, too many posters and leaflets - The waiting area will be tidied and updated. We will have only 1 leaflet rack. We will get rid of the majority of the posters and have a maximum of 5 posters in the waiting room. We will use the TV more to promote information. We will also add a notice board with info about our PPG and some information about the services available in the practice.

Your views (March 2014)

We gave flyer's out in the surgery for patients to complete in November 2011. The flyers explained that we were going to run a patient survey in the practice and we wanted to know what issues patients would like to be consulted about in the survey. We compared the results from the flyer with 2 other practices in our neighbourhood (The Elms and Dr Hegde's practice in Riverside). With this information we devised the patient survey, based on what our patient's wished to be asked about. Each question was a tick box answer and the options for each question were poor, fair, good, very good, excellent or not applicable. As agreed with our PPG (Patient Participation Group) we used this survey for the 2011/12, 2012/13 and 2013/14 Sandringham Medical Centre patients survey. The questions are listed below:  

  1. Level of satisfaction with the Practices opening hours
  2. Ease of contacting the Practice by telephone
  3. Chances of seeing a Doctor/Nurse within 48/24 hours
  4. Chances of seeing a Doctor/Nurse of your choice.
  5. Availability of booking advance appointments
  6. Information provided by the Practice about its services (e.g. repeat prescriptions, test results, online appointment booking)
  7. Level of satisfaction with the Practice waiting room (e.g. furniture, literature available)
  8. My overall satisfaction with the Doctor is
  9. The Doctors explanation of things to me is
  10. My confidence in the Doctors ability is
  11. The opportunity the Doctor gave me to express my concerns or fears is
  12. How satisfied are you with the continuity of care
  13. The recommendation I would give to my friends about the Doctors would be
  14. The Doctors consideration of my personal situation in deciding a treatment or advising me is
  15. The manner in which you were treated by the Reception Staff
  16. Respect shown for your privacy and confidentiality
  17. The opportunity for making compliments or complaints to this Practice about its service and quality of care
  18. The information provided by this Practice about how to prevent illness and stay healthy (e.g. alcohol use, health risks of smoking, diet habits etc.)
  19. The availability and administration of call and recall for ongoing health appointments is
  20. Do you think we should seek our patient's opinion on further service development
  21. How satisfied are you that we have extended the services that are available at the Practice
  22. Are there any services that we don't provide that you think it may be possible for us to provide in the future

The survey also included some patient profiling questions to ensure that we obtained the views from different patient groups. Out of 201 completed surveys (N/A = Not applicable):

How the survey was conducted

The survey was given out patients coming into to see a GP during December 2013 and January 2014. We gave out 50 surveys per GP so that the survey could be related back to that GP and they could reflect on their results in their annual appraisal. The surveys were anonymous so that patients could not be identified. We also contacted patients who were registered as blind to see if they wished to be asked the survey over the telephone. In total we received 201 completed surveys. We have 6886 patients registered with the practice.

Results: The results from the 201 completed surveys were collated and the overall practice results and any further comments made on the surveys are below:

 

POOR

FAIR

GOOD

V GOOD

EXCELLENT

N/A

Q1

1

20

47

68

65

0

Q2

10

25

53

47

65

1

Q3

16

30

44

48

63

0

Q4

11

39

49

45

52

5

Q5

21

40

45

38

55

2

Q6

7

29

48

48

67

2

Q7

1

23

51

66

60

0

Q8

0

4

26

62

108

1

Q9

0

3

29

53

115

1

Q10

0

3

28

52

116

22

Q11

1

4

29

52

114

1

Q12

3

3

30

58

107

0

Q13

0

3

29

59

110

0

Q14

0

5

29

57

110

0

Q15

2

2

17

56

124

0

Q16

1

3

19

67

111

0

Q17

2

11

51

68

58

11

Q18

1

13

46

77

59

5

Q19

2

12

49

67

64

7

 

 

 

Yes

Don't know

No

Q20

141

57

3

Q21

152

45

4

How we listened to your views

The results of the survey were discussed with the PPG on Wednesday 12th March 2014 and the group formulated an action plan for areas of change to address the issues raised. Action plan below. All actions to be implemented by the end of May 2014:

  1. Minor surgery - From May 2015 we will be offering minor surgery in the practice for our own patients and patients of other practices. Minor surgery includes steroid injections for different conditions and removal of certain moles, skin tags and other skin conditions. You will need to be seen by a GP in the practice first and then can decide if referral to our minor surgery clinic is necessary.
  2. Patients on shift work - You can book, cancel and change your GP appointments 24 hours a day/7 days a week online through Patient Access. You can also order your repeat prescriptions online through Patient Access. You will need your personal log in from our reception to use Patient Access online. You can also use our automated telephone system to book, cancel or change your GP appointment 24 hours a day/7 days a week. Please note: the on-the-day GP appointments are released at midnight every day, so you don't have to wait until 8am to book an appointment for that day if you are using Patient Access online or our automated telephone system to book your appointment.

  Some suggestions for services we already offer:

  1. Having your own GP assigned to you who you see every time - Patients can see any GP in the practice. For continuity of care we would prefer it if you booked in with the same GP each time you come in. This is not always possible as some GP's are not in every day, they may be on leave or they may be booked up for that day.
  2. Pre-bookable appointments - We offer pre-bookable appointments that can be booked up to 2 weeks in advance. We have reduced the number of pre-bookable appointments that we offer due to the number of non-attenders. We have found that the pre-booked appointments have a higher rate of DNA's (did not attend appointment) than the on-the-day appointments. 17% of appointments are pre-bookable.
  3. Family planning - Patients can book in to see a GP or nurse for family planning.
  4. Podiatry - Podiatry is already offered across the city at a number of different sites. If you would like an appointment with a podiatrist then you will need to complete a form at our reception and we will fax it off to the podiatry team who will then contract you with an appointment.

Some suggestions made were we have decided with our PPG not to make any changes:

  1. Walk-in facilities - As we already offer on-the-day appointments that group felt that walk-in facilities were not necessary. Please note: If you have a medical emergency and we are fully booked the receptionists will fit you in to see a GP.
  2. Blood taking - We have stopped offering phlebotomy services in the practice. There are 20 different sites across the city that offer phlebotomy services, our patients can use any of these sites. Some are open early morning and late evening. The nearest sites to our practice are Riverside Centre for Health, The York Centre and South Liverpool Treatment Centre
  3. Shorter waiting times - All clinicians start their sessions on time. Unfortunately some patients take longer to deal with then others, this can make the clinicians session run behind. Appointments are 10 minutes long so if you have more than 1 problem to discuss we ask that you make another appointment. Sometimes the clinician may have had to deal with an emergency, which can also make them run behind.
  4. Allow patients to make basic messages/queries with reception to avoid a telephone consultation with the GP - In some instances the receptionist can pass a message onto the GP. But if they think it would be better for you to speak to that GP, then you will be asked to make a telephone consultation.
  5. Home visits - Home visits are restricted mainly to elderly patients who are house bound and unable to travel except by ambulance. Exceptionally some patients who are seriously ill will also need home visits. Wherever possible requests for home visits should be made by contacting the surgery early in the morning on the day the visit is required.
  6. Some light music in reception - Some patients prefer quite whilst in the surgery.