Council and councillors

To receive an update from Lakeside Health Care Stamford regarding how the surgeries in Stamford are operating and the progress made regarding the improvement plans.

A verbal update and a short presentation (copy attached) were received from Dr Sara Hall, GP Partner and Teri White, Hub Manager from Lakeside Healthcare Stamford.  During the discussion, the following points were noted:

·       Teri White confirmed that her role as ‘Hub Manager’ was the equivalent of a ‘Practice Manager’ but that a Hub Manager managed more than one site or medical practice.

·       It was reported that the Patient Participation Group (PPG) used a ‘mystery shopper’ style of action to investigate the different processes within the medical practice and then provided feedback.

·       Dr Hall confirmed that the medical practice had seen a huge increase in the number of patients contacting the surgery during to the pandemic.

·       Post pandemic the medical practice was still dealing with a large number of people including an increased number of people with mental health issues resulting from the lockdown.

·       Lakeside Healthcare Stamford was the first surgery in the UK to use a Swedish system (Doctrin) to manage digital contact with patients.  This had proved very successful with patient satisfaction ratings recorded as  95% of users being happy with the new system after only 1 week of the system going live.

·       Patients were encouraged to use the digital access where possible.  This would then free up the phone lines and the GP’s so allowing them to deal with those patients who actually required a face-to-face GP meeting.

·       The practice was currently not at full capacity with regard to its GPs but there was a national shortage of medically qualified staff.

·       Dr Hall stated that the surgery was aware that patients were reluctant to use the new ‘triage’ system instead of the previous system of everyone having an appointment with a GP but the new triage system meant better and quicker treatment for patients. 

·       The message to patients that they would not be receiving a second-class service if they did not see a GP needed to be more strongly emphasised.  Patients would probably be better off seeing a more specialised trained member of staff than a GP e.g. Respiratory specialist Nurse, Diabetic Specialist Nurse, Musculo-skeletal Physiotherapist etc.

·       Councillor Wilby thanked the team at Lakeside Healthcare Stamford for all their hard work especially during the pandemic as the vaccination and testing sites had been run exceptionally well.

·       Dr Hall confirmed that the surgery had seen approximately 1000 patients leave in the past 12-18 months, with people registering to Wansford surgery and Empingham surgery.  However, some patients were now returning to Lakeside Healthcare Stamford and the surgery had approximately 29,000 patients registered at the practice. 

·       It was confirmed that St Mary’s Medical Practice in Stamford had been closed and used purely for vaccinations during the pandemic.  Over 20,000 vaccinations had been done but the site had since been re-opened for GP use. 

·       Some patients did not understand that the role of a ‘Receptionist’ had changed to that of a ‘Care Navigator’ or that they were medically trained to triage patients to the most suitable care provider.  Better communication with patients was needed to educate the public to the new ways of working in a modern medical practice.

·       Teri White confirmed that more communication was being done with staff and patients and that the number of complaints received by the practice had dropped significantly over the past four months.

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Councillor Toseland joined the meeting at 7.58 p.m.

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·       Dr Hall confirmed that the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) was responsible for providing GP services within an area but that Lakeside Healthcare Stamford was in discussions with them and South Kesteven District Council regarding the proposed new housing development to the northeast of Stamford.

·       Councillor Waller thanked Dr Hall and Teri White for their time and stated that she would have liked to have seen a member of the PPG at the meeting but hoped that a member would attend a future meeting along with Dr Hall and Mrs White when they returned to update the Scrutiny Committee on the results of their latest CQC inspection.

·       The Scrutiny Committee thanked Dr Hall and Teri White for their informative presentation and passed on their thanks to all the staff at Lakeside Healthcare Stamford for their ongoing hard work.

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Dr Hall and Mrs White left the meeting at 8.04 p.m.

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RESOLVED

That the Committee:

a)    RESERVED the right to invite Lakeside Healthcare Stamford back to a scrutiny committee meeting following the results of their recent CQC inspection report.