Patient involvement in East Surrey Commissioning was moved forward on 2nd March when ESyDoc board members met with patient representatives to discuss the development and role of the Patient Reference Group in shaping the commissioning process.
It is proposed that individual practice Patient Participation Groups (PPGs) will each have two nominated representatives in the Patient Reference Group. In turn, two patient representatives, who can be nominated by the Patient Reference Group, will be elected to sit on the ESyDoc Board. At present not all practices have a PPG, but the formation of these groups is being actively encouraged.
A key message in the White Paper is for GP Consortiums to involve patients in testing new proposals and to feed patient views into commission decisions and performance management. The Patient Reference Group will become a key planning tool in the commissioning process, helping to ensure safe, high quality, affordable, patient focused and fair services which are value for money. The group will have to represent the wider views of the patient population, and work closely with PPGs and have close links with existing Voluntary and Community Groups and Health and Social Care networks such as LINks/Healthwatch.
ESyDoc will have an External Relationships Manager to facilitate the Patient Reference Group and ensure their comments, views and opinions are passed to the ESyDoc Board.
Following the meeting on 2nd March, ESyDoc Chairman Joe McGilligan gave some encouraging feedback: “I was delighted that so many people from all aspects of patient care including the council were there and stayed despite the late finish- which is always a good sign the meeting was going well.”
Furthermore, he encourages those usually less forthright to have their say: “I would encourage those patients who have a view but not a loud voice to write their comments so they can be aired anonymously if wanted.” Gordon Ridgway, ESyDoc patient representative, has in addition expressed plans to encourage more diversity amoungst the patient representative group.
It is expected that Patient and Public Involvement will run, like a thread, through every aspect of work undertaken by ESyDoc. The clinical commissioning consortiums’ main points of reference will be the ESyDoc Patient Reference Group and external health orientated groups. It is also expected that appropriate patient representation will be evident when working on disease specific pathways, such as has already been the case with the current Diabetes project.
