South Leicestershire Medical Group and Patient Participation Group

The South Leicestershire Medical Group and its Patient Participation Group (PPG) would like to thank the Kibworth Chronicle in approaching them for a response to the question posed by the published open letter ‘has the situation improved sufficiently and noticeably?’

South Leicestershire Medical Group and Patient Participation Group

Since the Care Quality Commission Inspection (CQC) April 2022, SLMG has made many improvements to ensure that it delivers high quality services to people. The practice recognised that some patients felt their experiences were falling short of the services they deserve. Feedback has been listened to and has helped to drive forward many improvements. It is important to note that the Integrated Care Board are supporting and monitoring a (QIP) for SLMG which was developed using the findings of the inspection. The QIP is reviewed and updated regularly using a risk assessment tool to assess priority actions needed.  The CQC will arrange a visit to SLMG in the future to carry out a targeted inspection of the areas raised.

The QIP shows progress on all action points, including where new systems have been implemented and where strategic and operational changes have taken place which result in more positive outcomes for patient safety and care. As of April 2023, SLMG can confirm that of 23 action points that were highlighted as red at the start of the process, 13 are now showing complete (green) and 10 have reduced in level of risk (amber) and currently require further work due to the necessity of time to ensure embedding of new practices or policies. You can view a summary of the QIP (April 2023) on the SLMG website.

As a result of this work and by working together with the Primary Care Network, there is noticeable improvement within the surgery sites, particularly greater access to a much wider team of health professionals that have become involved in patient’s care. SLMG can advise patients on who is the most appropriate person for them to see, which may not always be a GP. In addition, in line with other practices, appointments for SLMG services have been increased to higher levels than pre-pandemic.

During the last 12-18 months, the PPG have been actively involved in several projects relating to communication and business practice. The findings were presented to the Partners and Management Team at the practice in January 2023 and actions to improve communication across the patient population have been agreed. It was important to achieve some short-term actionable requirements from this piece of work and in October 2022, the PPG launched their Facebook page. This page links with the SLMG website and enables consistent and important practice messages as well as items of community news to be shared quickly. Whilst the PPG acknowledge that not every patient uses Facebook, it has gained positive feedback from patients who welcome the updates in a timely manner. A greater piece of work being undertaken by the PPG is to extend into rural and cultural communities to support key communications reaching sometimes isolated areas of the county. It is a key requirement for communications to be accessible by all the patient population and the PPG is open to receive any ideas or recommendations to support its Communication and Business Framework. If you would like more information on this, please do contact us at ppggroup.slmg@gmail.com.

This is a response to an open letter which can be found here

https://www.kibworthchronicle.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=15684&action=edit