Preston Park Surgery Update

I had a meeting this week with our Practice Manager, Janak Chauhan, for an update on what’s happening at the practice.

Patient Health Records System (Patients Know Best)

Preston Park Community Primary Care Network (PCN) is trialing the Patients Know Best (PKB) health records system for Brighton and Hove.

Preston Park Surgery is to be the first System One based practice to trial PKB. The trial will begin towards the end of September this year and last 3 months.  The access to health records will be through the NHS app.

Three other surgeries in our PCN (Warmdene, Stanford and The Havens), which are EMIS based, will be starting trials at the beginning of September 2020.

There is more information about PKB on this website here.

Flu Vaccine

In order to be covid safe, flu vaccines will be given in the St Augustine’s Centre (opposite the surgery at the bottom of Florence Road) over 3 Saturdays starting on 26 September.

It will be for the usual eligible people only, that is over 65s, pregnant women and those with specific medial conditions (COPD, diabetes, etc). The Government’s announcement of ‘all over 50’ is unlikely to happen as there isn’t the vaccine available. The practice ordered this year’s vaccine over a year ago. However they are awaiting further guidance on this.

There will be 5 vaccination ‘pods’ in St Augustines each operated by a clinician. There will also be 5 more staff acting as marshals (they do not need us to volunteer to help as marshals). We will shortly be invited by email/text/letter to book a time slot. 

Preston Park Community Primary Care Network (PCN)

The current state of recruitment of roles to be shared by the PCN is

• 3 Pharmacists (one still being recruited)
• 1 Pharmacy technician (will handle prescriptions)
• 1 MSK (physiotherapist) – will be in Preston Park Surgery on Tuesdays
• 1 Social prescriber (being recruited)

Further roles will be recruited next year.

The Role of the PPG

I had a general discussion with Janak about how our role as a PPG could be developed. I explained that I hope the practice will proactively ask us for help with issues they are facing and for ‘the patient perspective’ on how the practice is doing. I noted that the 20 members of the PPG website have a wide range of skills and experience which I feel could contribute to resolving issues faced by the practice – if they are shared with us.

Janak agreed to bring this up at the next practice meeting.  We also agreed to meet monthly as the three monthly PPG meetings are too far apart for the current fast changing situation.

To exemplify the potential help from patients I propose that there is a list of our skills and experience on this website.

If you are happy to, please email me a summary of your skills and experience.  I will then compile a single list, not identifying individuals, and place it in the members-only area of this website (which Janak has access to).

Please add any comments you have below: