I went to the evening session and wasn't impressed. There were three discussion groups and everyone was invited to air their views. So far so good...but - There were no independent facilitators. The person who lead our group's discussion was actually the PR and Comms person for Concordia so not exactly impartial. - No one took any notes. I was told that as similar issues were raised at the morning session there was no need to record discussion points. Although after my prompting the Concordia representative did write a couple of sentences. - Medical and admin staff attended, which is fine, but I had a specific issue about one of the doctors who was sitting in another group and didn't feel that I could raise it in that environment. On the positives - Feedback from both events will be shared with patients and as I understand a follow up action plan is to be developed. - There is now a new Practice Manager in place, Sonia Hall, and everyone was encouraged to raise any issues with medical care and admin direct to her, so at least I now know who to contact. - Concordia has applied for a capital grant from the NHS to refurbish the building which they admitted is not up to standard. - There's a consultative forum in place to help ensure proper communication between patients and managers. There were a lot of complaints about reception staff and levels of customer service. The response - CCTV to be installed - which I think is a shocking way to treat people. Surely more training and development with adequate supervision is more appropriate, but what do I know. There were also complaints about high turnover of staff however were told that there now should be more consistency in who we see at the practice and locums aren't utilised to the extent that they were in the past. The other thing that was mentioned which is my personal bugbear is long waiting times to see medical staff. Last week I waited 40 mins to see a doctor for a five mins appointment which is in my view unacceptable. Another woman reported waiting over an hour for her appointment and this clearly needs to be sorted. It was interesting to find out that Concordia took over managing the practice around seven years ago which I think was when it all started to go downhill. I'm trying not to be cynical but my overall feeling is that this was more of a reputation management exercise rather than a genuine attempt to meaningfully engage with patients. It was telling that the Comms person mentioned that Concordia was concerned about the significant number of negative comments about the practice on the NHS Choices website. As I say I want to be fair but am not convinced that there's going to be any actual change on the ground.
