Through patient involvement, patients, members of the public and Third Sector representatives have an opportunity to share their experience, skills and expertise to support us.
Building upon the Health Forum and our patient participation groups (PPGs), we recognise the need for additional patient representation to help shape and influence improving healthcare services for our town.
We recognise that those Patient Representatives who give their time and skills to us should receive fulfilment from their role, developmental opportunities and respect for the contribution they make - we are lucky to receive added value for this work, for service users and improvement in health services.
To support this, we have developed a Patient Representation policy to ensure patient representation is fair, fully transparent and protects patients, the public and staff members:
Read our Patient Presentation policy
Accompanying the Patient Representative Policy is our Patient Charter which was developed from the Patient Representative training by the Patient Representatives and agreed by the CCG:
Our Communications and Engagement Team are responsible for supporting Patient Representatives. This support includes:
- providing timely and clear information on each activity (including hard copy information as requested)
- helping and supporting representatives to carry out activities
- providing appropriate materials to carry out activities
- advising on how to deal with any difficulties and provide guidance with situations that are new
- providing correct and up to date information, sent in an agreed way and format (such as email or post)
- to give feedback from the meeting/committee in a timely manner
- to treat the Patient Representative as a full member of any committee/ meeting
- hold meetings or events at an accessible venue at an appropriate and convenient time
We provide robust training for our Patient Representatives.
To start the session training sessions, Patient Representatives are asked to reflect upon their personal motivations for becoming a Patient Representative and as such they are asked to reflect on the answers to the questions:
- Why are you a Patient Representative?
- How can you achieve this and what support do you need?
- What motivates you specifically to do this role?
The training then ‘covered the seven deadly sins’ of being a patient representative:
1. Not underestimating the the importance of the role
2. Being unprepared
3. Being succinct
4. The importance of sticking to time
5. Leaving personal agendas at the door
6. The importance of working as a team
7. The importance of listening
Additional Training that has taken place to our Patient Representatives and staff is ‘Making Magic Meetings’’. This focused on tools and techniques to making meetings as effective as possible. The session was facilitated by Warrington Voluntary Action.
Opportunities:
When commencing a procurement process it is essential that patient representatives are involved to ensure that the patient voice is central to any decisions.Patients have been involved in several procurement processes as listed below:
- GP Out of Hours – A Cheshire and Merseyside wide procurement exercise is currently underway. We have a patient representative who is involved in the procurement process.
- GP Contract – Working with NHS England a patient was involved in the procuring of GP contracts following the separating of one contract into three separate contracts.
- GP Five Year Forward View – the CCG went out to tender for an organisation to support us to deliver the priorities in the GP Five Year View.
- Neurological Pathway - following the transformational work on children and young people’s emotional health and wellbeing services it was recognised that there was a gap in our services. We went out to procure an organisation to fill this gap to offer support, information and mentoring for families with a child with a Neurodevelopmental condition.The successful organisation was ADDvanced Solutions.
- Online Consultation: Following the national drive to increase the use of online consultation the CCG undertook a procurement process.A patient was involved in this process. eConsult was the successful bidder.
- Quality Committee: A patient representative has been selected to sit on the CCG’s Quality Committee.
- ECG Programme Board: The board was established to deliver the implementation of ECGs across Warrington Primary Care.
- Quality Accounts: Three representatives attended our Quality Accounts meeting to discuss the accounts from a patient point of view and feed in any relevant discussions that had taken place at the Health Forum and PPG Network.
- Home Visiting Policy: We established a task and finish group to review Home Visiting Policies across primary care to try and develop standardised criteria.A PPG representative was involved to ensure any impacts to patients was discussed and listened to. From this work a new Policy has been developed and agreed across Warrington.
- Eastern Cancer Sector Hub: Working across the Eastern Sector (Warrington, Halton, St Helens and Knowsley) to develop a new cancer hub, three CCG patient representatives were involved in the stakeholder panels as part of pre-consultation work. The three patient representatives also undertook bus journeys to and from different hospital sites so the impact on travel to patients could measured and feed into the Steering Group.
- Primary Care Strategy Development Group: We have a patient representative attending this group to help the patient voice be heard within Primary Care. The PPG representative fedback to the Steering Group on issues from the PPG Together meetings.
- Patient Equality and Diversity Champions: Under the Equality Act 2010 we must consider nine protected characteristics in delivering and commissioning health services. It is important to understand the impact of health services to the nine protected characteristics and the wider community. As part of this, we undertake Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs). The main responsibility of these newly developed Patient Equality Champions will be to raise the profile of Equality and Diversity and to be involved in the undertaking of EIAs. View the Patient Equality and Diversity Champion job role.