Talking, Listening & Working Together - feedback from the April workshop

The workshop was facilitated by Sally Czabaniuk, Engagement Lead with NHS North East Lincolnshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) with the support of colleagues from partner organisations and Healthwatch North East Lincolnshire.

The slide set used at the session is attached.

We began with a short video - Strong, Integrated Care Systems Everywhere about the changes that are taking place nationally in the way that the NHS is organised. 

Then Julie Wilson, Commissioning Lead with the CCG talked about the Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care System and what that would mean for us locally in North East Lincolnshire.

We want to make sure that local people and communities are engaged and involved in developing health, care and wellbeing priorities and plans.  In our first discussion groups we looked at how people have their say now about health and care services, how you hear about opportunities to get involved and what you thought worked well.

We also asked groups to think about how we can find out what people whose voices we seldom hear need from their health and care services and how we can involve people from all parts of our community in the future.

We had 5 table top discussion groups, and this is what you said.

 Ways that work well:

Some things that don’t work so well

Ways to involve people who do not speak up:

Technology

Access

Face to face

Listening

Part 2

In the second half we put Talking, Listening and Working Together into practice to look at future plans for Diagnostic Services, things like X-rays, scans and other tests.  Julie presented information about plans for a Community Diagnostic Centre for North East Lincolnshire which is part of a national initiative.

The discussion groups then looked at:

Good experience of being referred for tests

What would have made it better?

Communication

Patient Experience

Access

Things to consider when designing new ways of delivering diagnostic tests – what is important to get it right for patients and their families

Transport/getting there

Access in the building

Patient Experience

Appointments

Communication

We all agreed that all the areas covered were priorities to take forward when planning the development of the Community Diagnostic Centre for North East Lincolnshire.

Questions, comments and follow up

“It is difficult to find out information in one place about what support is available for older people”.

connectNEL is a community signposting service connecting people with the support they need.  This includes a dedicated 24/7 phone line 01472 403 403 and website https://connectnel.com/

“Can Patient Participation Groups (PPGs) be more involved with all of these changes?”

The PPGs will be key partners. In future sessions we are going to look at how PPGs and other groups will be part of the Partnerships Community and Service User network and influence the work of the Partnership.  

“Is there a way to make an anonymous complaint at a GP practice because many people are concerned that if they complain it will affect their future treatment?”

General comments can be passed on anonymously to practices via suggestion boxes and if there isn’t one, speak to the CCG PALS team who can make a note of the comments and action as required. However, if it is a complaint about a specific thing that the patient has experienced then complaints in their nature need to be investigated and this would mean that it would be essential that the details of the case were provided so that the investigation could take place.

“Why does nobody ever think of visiting a pharmacist?”

Pharmacists are key parts of health systems. There are also new roles within primary care to support with demand. One of the new roles are ‘clinical pharmacists’ who have a key set of specific skills to help patients with medicine management and lots of other things. As a CCG, our communications team share lots of messaging via different means about the benefits of visiting a pharmacist.

“Why do we have a national issue to access GP face to face appointments? There are campaigns in the media encouraging people to talk to their GP if something in their body doesn’t feel right and most people find this laughable as it is so hard to access a GP appointment”

Throughout the pandemic, GPs have continued to be open and seeing patients. At the outset of the pandemic, the triage first system was put in place. This is an approach we have been trying to work towards for some time but it became necessary to work this way during the pandemic. However, if people need to be seen by a GP, there are appointments available. It may be that certain problems can be dealt with by a different clinical professional like a nurse or a clinical pharmacist or one of the other new roles mentioned previously but if there is a clinical need to be seen by a GP then people are being seen.

Please speak to the CCG PALS team to discuss this with us and with your consent, we will look into this.

PALS is a confidential service and can be contacted by:

Telephone: 0300 3000 500 (Calls to this number are charged at local rate from a landline or mobile number)

Email: nelccg.askus@nhs.net

Writing to: Customer Care Team, North East Lincolnshire CCG, Municipal Offices, Town Hall, Grimsby, DN31 1HU        

Next steps…

We have arranged for a member of the CCG PALS team to attend the next two workshops to be on hand to hear people’s comments, compliments and complaints.

We hope you enjoyed this workshop and hope you will join us again. To help us to improve these sessions we would appreciate it if you could complete the attached evaluation

It is important to us to know whether we are supporting or providing services fairly to all groups of people, and we would appreciate it if you could complete this survey - the questions are intended to help us to find out about that. The information you give us will be kept confidentially and stored securely and will only be used to monitor the fairness and effectiveness of our service delivery and employment practices. No personal information which can identify you, such as your name or address, will be used in producing equality reports. You do not have to complete this form or some of the questions if you do not want to and it will not affect your access to services or how we treat you.