Agenda item

To receive the final report of the GP Access Scrutiny Task Group, which

sets out the task group’s findings and recommendations.

The Chair thanked Councillor Daly and members of the Task Group for the work they had completed over the past few months. He invited Councillor Daly, as Chair of the GP Access Task Group, to introduce the final report.

Councillor Daly advised that the overwhelming majority of residents were happy with their consultation with their GP. The greatest determinant for whether someone received a good service from their GP was the practice they chose to register with. The Committee heard that the sector of the Brent community who were the least satisfied with GP access was parents of infants, and young people, which the task group had heard from Brent Youth Parliament. The task group had also heard anecdotal evidence of discrimination towards Eastern European residents. Almost all stakeholders the task group had engaged reported being registered with a GP, ranging from ex-prisoners to homeless individuals. The task group had spent a lot of time working on a basic standard of service people could expect from their GP, focused around the customer experience, and this formed the basis of the task group recommendations. She concluded by advising the Committee that a lot of GPs were already doing a lot of the recommendations, but not all GPs were doing everything. She offered thanks to the Scrutiny Officers and Partnerships Team who had assisted the Task Group.

The Chair thanked Councillor Daly for her introduction and invited comments and questions from those present, with the following issues raised:

Councillor Nerva (Lead Member for Public Health, Leisure and Culture) thanked the task group. He assured the Committee that although the Cabinet were not directly responsible for GP services, the Cabinet would want to take up these recommendations and champion the work outlined. The idea of a Brent GP standard was welcomed and he looked forward to working with the Integrated Care Partnership (ICP) on this.

Judith Davey (CEO, Brent HealthWatch) was pleased to have contributed to the report. She advised that Healthwatch Brent were also doing a substantial piece of work on GP access, and had participated in the HealthWatch England Survey about access to GPs. Of all HealthWatch providers in North West London (NWL), Brent HealthWatch had received the highest response to the survey by a substantial degree, which she felt was positive and had led to lots of insights from the survey. HealthWatch were also doing a deep dive of the number of Primary Care Networks (PCNs), including using their voluntary network to do ‘enter and views’. HealthWatch had been gathering testimonials from stakeholders through video, and the emerging findings were consistent with the Task Group recommendations.

Fana Hussain (Borough Lead Director - Brent, NWL CCG) agreed that the recommendations of the task group were fair and reasonable from a healthcare point of view, and health colleagues appreciated the work that had been done. She highlighted that GP access was not a straightforward area of work and was something healthcare continued to work on and strengthen on a regular basis. There was a number of innovations being taken forward, including GP surgeries opening on Saturdays throughout the month of March to address the access issues experienced over the past 2 years. The CCG were looking at how it developed primary care services going forward, including the digital offer, face to face appointments, and outreach work to understand the needs of the population to deliver services locally.

The Chair invited a representative of Brent Youth Parliament to address the Committee. He advised that Brent Youth Parliament welcomed the final recommendation about further work being done to look into young people’s access to GPs. He queried how many young people were involved in patient participation groups, and if they were not involved whether this meant that the minimum standard agreed might miss the needs of young people. Councillor Daly felt that patient participation groups were not a strength of any consumer participation in Brent, and doubted young people were involved. The task group had discussed creating PCN patient participation groups and she felt it was vital young people were involved. Fana Hussain advised that some patient participation groups were online and that was where the younger population got involved. She acknowledged that patient participation groups may not be a true representation of the patient population at times and young people did not always have the time to attend but did get involved through Zoom meetings.

The Committee queried how the recommendations would be incorporated into services. Fana Hussain advised that some recommendations were currently being worked on, such as the implementation of new telephone systems to improve telephone access services, but some would take longer to embed. Some practices were in premises struggling with infrastructure. She advised the Committee residents would see a change in the way services were provided from the coming financial year, looking at investment in General Practice and expanding the access offer. National PCN development would come into place from October 2022, with PCNs working as 1 practice, 7 days a week, from 8am to 8pm.

The Committee thanked all those who had contributed and RESOLVED to agree the recommendations of the task group.