We have a virtual patient participation group at our practice.
After much consideration, the partners have decided that the best course of action is to disband the current Patient Participation Group (PPG).
As part of our deliberations, we have reviewed the national GP contract which sets out the core requirement that we must establish and maintain a group to obtain the views of patients about the services we deliver and enable us to obtain feedback.
We have also taken account of research by the King’s Fund (quality of patient engagement and involvement in primary care) which suggests that a PPG does not need to be a formal group with specific named members, a chair and a secretary that records minutes of meetings. It states that practices should gather feedback in any way they feel is right for their patient population and that they may find they can have more effective conversations through engaging with different community groups at different times and in different places. Practices may also choose to use digital technologies to engage with patients to reach more people, such as SMS messaging, social media and other online methods.
Taking this into account we are planning to start again and refresh an approach we had adopted in the first few years of the practice by creating a very large virtual PPG, attempting to ensure it is representative of the whole practice population that we serve. We would plan to survey the virtual PPG at least twice a year and additionally to this if planning changes to services. We are also committed to involving specific patient and community groups in service improvement projects. We feel this approach will be more manageable, respectful of people’s time and that by using a more innovative and flexible approach we can ensure that feedback about services reflects all patients.
If you are able and willing to commit to respond to a biannual survey and a very small number of ad-hoc surveys through the year then we would be very pleased if you signed up to join the virtual PPG.
Please register your interest by filling in our patient group sign up form below.
Join our PPG
We welcome enquiries from patients who would like to join our virtual patient group.