Patient Participation Group

 

Our Patient Participation Group (PPG) meets to provide a forum for discussion about the practice.

Our PPG was formed in September 2011 and is an independent body which acts as an interface between the patients and the Practice. In addition to its members, two of the GP Partners, the Practice Manager and Medical Secretary form part of the group.

The aims of the PPG are to:

  • Assist the practice to serve the community in the most effective way
  • Encourage a greater commitment to community health
  • Have an increased awareness to patients' needs
  • Increase knowledge of local services
  • Improve the patient experience
 

Join the PPG

The PPG is drawn from across our patient list. New members are always welcome, please contact us via our secure online form

Confidentiality of course prevents the PPG's involvement with issues that relate to specific patients. These are best discussed with your GP or the Practice Manager.

The PPG committee communicates with our patients via this website, quarterly newsletter and the information screen in the waiting room.

 

PPG Rules

  • All members are equally important and all opinions should be respected.
  • Discrimination on any grounds will not be tolerated.
  • Matters discussed within the group should be assumed confidential unless otherwise stated.
  • Meetings should be held on a regular basis, to be agreed by members
 

Terms Of Reference 

The Group shall be called the St Andrews Medical Centre Patient Participation Group.

Aims of the Patient Participation Group (PPG)

  • To facilitate good relations between the GP practice (referred to as the ‘practice’ throughout this document) and patients by communicating patient experience, interests and concerns and providing feedback to the practice on current procedures and proposed new developments
  • To work collaboratively and positively with the practice to improve services and facilities for patients and to act as a sounding board for practice staff on issues affecting patients
  • To build two-way communication and co-operation between the practice and patients, other individuals and organisations in healthcare, and the wider community to the mutual benefit of all
  • To act as a representative group to support the practice and influence local provision of health and social care

• To raise funds for the practice to assist in the purchase of additional equipment and services for the benefit of patients.

PPG Structure & Membership

  • Membership of the PPG shall be open to all registered patients and their carers
  • Membership will reflect the patient profile and be widely representative and inclusive of different genders, ethnicities, ages and abilities as required in the GP contract
  • The PPG will be non-political and non-sectarian, will at all times respect diversity and exemplify its commitment to the principles contained within the Equality Act

PPG Committee

  • The St Andrews Medical Centre PPG shall elect officers from among the members of the PPG and they will be known as the St Andrews Medical Centre PPG committee. These will include Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary and, if needed, a Treasurer. Other posts may be created by the Annual General Meeting on a proposal from the PPG 
  • The PPG and the PPG committee shall both hold regular meetings. To maintain an active PPG, any PPG member who fails to attend three consecutive PPG meetings may be deemed to have resigned.
  • The PPG will extend an open invitation to practice staff to attend its meetings as agreed with the practice manager
  • The PPG shall normally not exceed twenty members. Between the Annual General Meetings, the PPG may co-opt individual members if needed to ensure that the PPG is fully representative of the patient community.

Virtual PPG

  • To support the PPG and extend its reach, the PPG will establish an online group to be called the Virtual Patient Participation Group (VPPG). Any patient may volunteer to join the VPPG. The PPG will regularly contact the VPPG in order to obtain their views on specific matters.
  • A member of the PPG will be made responsible for liaising with the VPPG and ensure that no one is excluded.
  • There will be a standing item on the PPG agenda reporting any key themes, issues or suggestions that have been identified by any member of the VPPG to help ensure its members are engaged. Notwithstanding the above, any patient may send views and suggestions directly to the PPG
  • Members of the VPPG will follow the same Code of Conduct as those in the PPG that meet face-to-face.

Management of the Face-to-Face & Virtual PPGs

  • The PPG shall meet face to face no fewer than four times a year. The PPG committee may meet more regularly for planning purposes and liaison with the practice staff if required
  • In the absence of the Chair and Vice Chair, those members who are present shall elect a Chair from among the attendees
  • Meetings are subject to a quorum of five members of the PPG. Apologies for absence should be sent to the Secretary or Chair prior to the meeting. In the absence of any apologies or available explanation, any member recorded as not attending three consecutive meetings will be deemed to have resigned from the Face-to-Face PPG. The resulting vacancy can be offered to another registered patient
  • The PPG may invite relevant professionals or patients to specific meetings. Any such persons shall respect the confidentiality of the PPG
  • Decisions shall be reached normally by consensus among those present. However, if a vote is required, decisions shall be made by simple majority of those present and voting. In the event of a tied outcome the Chair may exercise a casting and additional vote
  • The Secretary shall produce minutes of meetings to be considered and approved at the fol lowing meeting of the PPG and subsequently be sent to members of PPG and VPPG via email. Hard copies will be displayed in the practice

PPG Activities

The GP contract sets out aims and objectives for the PPG:

  • Make reasonable efforts during each financial year to review its membership in order to ensure that it is representative of the registered patients in the practice
  • Obtain the views of patients who have attended the practice about the services delivered by the practice and obtain feedback from its registered patients about those services
  • Review any feedback received about the services delivered by the practice with practice staff and relevant members of the PPG with a view to agreeing the improvements (if any) to be made to those services
  • Contribute to decision making at the practice and consult on service development and provision where appropriate, expressing opinions on these matters on behalf of patients. However, the final decisions on service delivery rest with the practic
  • Act as a sounding board to provide feedback on patients’ needs, concerns and interests and challenge the practice constructively whenever necessary, also helping patients to understand the practice viewpoint
  • Communicate information which may promote or assist with health and social care
  • Explore overarching ideas and issues identified in patient surveys
  • Maintain a PPG area in the waiting room of the surgery with up-to-date information on current activities and opportunities for patients to comment (e.g. via a suggestion box). The PPG will, where possible, regularly meet, greet and engage with patients in the waiting area
  • Act as a forum for staff to raise practice issues affecting patients, or for input into any operational issues affecting staff, so that patients can have their views on practice matters considered
  • Act as a forum for ideas on health promotion, self-care and support activities within the practice to promote healthy lifestyle choices
  • Raise patient awareness of the range of services available at the surgery and help patients to access/use such services more effectively.

N.B: To ensure a jointly agreed approach by the practice and PPG members, this section should be signed by both parties.

These Terms of Reference were adopted by St Andrews Medical Centre PPG at the meeting held at the medical centre on Monday 19th February 2024 and may be reviewed according to emerging needs.

PPG Minutes

View our latest minutes. To view previous minutes please contact the practice.

Notes of the meeting held on Monday 15th June 2026

  • Chair - SD
  • Attendees - HW, VB, CT, TP, RS (Zoom) Hannah Lawrence (Staff), Dr Joanna Mulvihill (Partner GP), Nana Adjei (Practice Manager)

New members and Leavers

We welcomed SD back as Chair of the PPG group. We also welcomed VB and TP to the PPG.

Previous actions and minutes

Nana briefly ran through the minutes and action points from the previous meeting. It was raised that previous meeting dates and minutes were not fully updated on the StAMC website, this will be actioned and dealt with

Brief Update from WKHCP

Simon highlighted items from recent meetings and emails from WKHCP, West Kent Health Care Partnerships. Full report attached.

In summary, the article highlights examples of good practice in areas such as:

  • better use of clinical templates to support assessment and record-keeping
  • wellbeing and prevention initiatives, including community-based support
  • improved patient access through websites, telephone systems and triage
  • work to build trust with communities, including around childhood vaccination
  • visible patient feedback approaches such as “You Said, We Did”
  • partnership working, innovation and service improvement.

Neighbourhood Health Framework for information, which has been published jointly by the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England.

In summary, the framework sets out how ICBs, local authorities, health and wellbeing boards and wider partners, should work together to develop more joined-up health and care services at neighbourhood level. Its overall aim is to organise care more closely around people’s needs, improve access, strengthen prevention, support more care closer to home, and reduce pressure on hospitals and other acute services.

Following this, Simon and Nana both confirmed they would be meeting again to discuss how the framework would apply to St Andrews Medical Centre concerning Patient information and GDPR.

Nana explained in further detail how the Neighbourhood Working will work and its aims. St Andrews is part of the Pilot Scheme for the ICB. The aim is to reduce A&E admissions by using John Hopkins process for our patients and implementing care plans for patients in risk groups 10 and 11 and using home visits by Frailty Specialists for housebound patients, arranging pre-emptive medication reviews for patients on five or more medications, general monitoring of high risk patients and taking a more holistic approach to patient care. Patients will be selected by patient segmentation done by assessing their needs and allocating a John Hopkins score to each patient.

Practice Updates presented by Nana Adjei

  • Dr Faye Moriarty will be retuning next month, July 2026, after her maternity leave and we look forward to welcoming her back to the practice
  • Kia Evans, part time Practice Nurse will sadly not be returning after her maternity leave and we are actively recruiting for a new nurse
  • The staff wellbeing survey will be being sent out to all staff in the coming weeks which will aid the practice highlight areas where action is required and areas that are being done well for all staff
  • We are actively working towards the ‘up skilling’ of team members at the practice and through doing so broadening staff skill sets and aiding with training
  • The introduction of Abtrace will be happening soon. This will assist with diary recalls for patients with monitoring needs and long-term conditions.
  • The major change in the GMS 2026/27 contract stated that we now would be open to patients’ queries from 8am – 6.30pm daily, which is a change from before when Anima could be capped and could close during the day, now it remains open all day. As a practice, we are managing as best we can to this adjustment with no additional appointments being made available but additional requests for appointments daily.
  • SD and Nana will be working together to increase patient awareness of the PPG by updating posters and website, producing a survey and FAQ links for the PPG
  • Dr Mulvihill and Nana recently attended a local meeting with other GP practices where all stated that patient numbers were stagnant and no other practices were seeing list size changes of any sizeable amount. Our current list size of just under 10, 000 is slightly under where we should be as per the agreement for being in the new building but with limited possibilities to increase size it is not an option right now without new housing developments locally.
  • RS enquired if there were figures from the ICB of A&E attendees with no registered practice and if this could be investigated.

Public engagement

Dr Mulvihill organised a Women’s Health event recently, which was well attended and very well received. Attendance was by invitation only to ensure a similar cohort of attendee to ensure the evening stayed relevant to all. Further events are currently being planned such as a wider audience Women’s health event, PSA event for men and others

Blood Tests at St Andrews

RS stated that she was experiencing some pushback about booking a time sensitive blood test. Dr Mulvihill and Nana discussed the possibility of having more diary entries relating to time sensitive blood tests added to patient records to reduce pushback.

AOB

  • Some of the following points were not specifically raised during the AOB part of the meeting but were raised during other agenda items and are simply noted here.
  • RS shared the great news that after a period of illness and going through a drug trial she is now in remission which was very welcome news
  • It was asked if the upcoming referendum within Southborough would have any impact on the surgery, it was decided that this would be discussed at an upcoming Partners meeting. It was also stated that the referendum was not relevant for the practice to have an input
  • VB raised a recent experience where there was a disconnect between what her GP discussed and offered and what was actually done by the secretarial team and lead to a discussion over training regarding procedure and policy. Dr Mulvihill and Nana confirmed that training offered varies as to where the updated policy or procedure has come from, either within the practice, the ICB or NHS as a whole. It was decided to have a more open and clear dialogue between GP’s and administration as to constraints with regards to referrals etc. to avoid future issues
  • There was a query over how correspondence from other NHS teams is dealt with when it comes in to the surgery, which Nana and Dr Mulvihill explained to the meeting
  • VB asked whether it was possible for the Anima questions to be amended and adjusted for St Andrews but it was explained that it was a generic software that could not be tailored to our exact requirements but that a workaround to the issue could be done by choosing Simple Query when starting doing an Anima request.
  • A query was raised over the Privacy Policy for St Andrews and BetterLetter. Dr Mulvihill and Nana both confirmed that it would have been reviewed and approved during Due Diligence with the ICB prior to implementing the system. Nana to feedback the relevant documentation and policies relating to the use of patient information while using the software
  • HW raised an issue around the disconnect between reception and letters received and how correspondence is processed. Following this discussion, Nana confirmed the process for document processing.
  • Letter received – Added to Docman – Uploaded for processing to BetterLetter – Added to Emis and marked for GP or Admin attention
  • Nana confirmed that if a patient is concerned about a missing letter then to ask Reception to chase the secretarial team.
  • It was mentioned that on the St Andrews website it states that ear irrigation is not recommended and not a service that the Practice offers. Dr Mulvihill confirmed that we do now do ear irrigation when it is determined suitable for the patient and Nana confirmed he would review and revise the website if necessary
  • Dr Mulvihill asked the meeting attendees their thoughts on continuity of care and seeing the same GP for ongoing issues. It was discussed and general consensus was that it was something that patients would want and appreciate but that it was a thing of the past. It was said in the room that patients would be willing to wait for an appointment if it meant they could see the same GP so as to eliminate wasted time going over the history to the issue. The practice is continually reviewing this to improve our policy around this
  • RS wanted it noted how well she has been looked after by the District Nursing team and how she wanted it known how much she appreciated the care that she has received from them
Date of Next Meeting

Next meeting date and time to be decided. It was discussed as to thoughts about an evening meeting with a 6.30pm start time but this is yet to be formalised