By Nicola Davies A successful PPG, finally! My patient group is outstanding, and it’s not just me saying that, CQC agreed with me. Our recent ‘Outstanding’ rating is largely down to the fantastic work my Patient Participation Group has done and continues to do for our community. For a number of years, they have been working…

You may or may not have read my previous blogs giving a PPG Chairman’s perspective of a CQC inspection, but I promised a final installment to review our report. Observant ones among you will wonder why the delay, especially considering the first two blogs were published last Autumn? With Spring now sprung the simple answer:…

After 15 minutes providing the CQC chief inspector (aka ‘the chief’) with a thorough overview of the PPG things started to get a bit more interesting and I must admit that I found the remainder of the ‘discussion’ valuable, insightful, useful and in a few cases ‘eye-opening’! As best I can, I’ll try and group…

Part one of three: The CQC inspection process through the eyes of a PPG chairman  “As a PPG Chairman I’ve heard a lot about the CQC in recent times… so last month I admit I was particularly pleased to hear they were visiting our practice. Being a proactive PPG chair, I encouraged PPG members to do…

Patient participation groups (PPGs) are now an integral part of GP practices up and down the country. Indeed, in April 2016 it became a contractual requirement for all English practices to form a patient participation group (PPG) within 12 months and to make reasonable efforts for this to be representative of the practice population. That…

On 3rd April, my practice wrote a letter to all our patients to tell them about the pressures general practice is under and what this means for them in terms of their care. I was pretty nervous about sending it out, as we know how things can be portrayed and how some people seem to…

We’re nearly at the end of the year! Catch up on anything you missed across Practice Index in November. Best of our blogs HR Clinic – Performance Management (Questions and Answers) – In our latest HR clinic, Robyn Clark (aka JacksonR) and Susi O’Brien (HR Help advisor) explored how to address performance issues within general…