A Patient Participation Group (PPG) is a group of patients, carers and GP practice staff who meet to discuss practice issues and patient experience to help improve the service.
Since April 2015, it has been a contractual requirement of NHS England for all GP practices to have a PPG and to make reasonable efforts for this to be representative of the practice population.
The purpose of a PPG:
- To give patients and practice staff the opportunity to meet and discuss topics of mutual interest.
- To provide a means for patients to become more involved and make suggestions about the healthcare services they receive.
- To explore issues from patient surveys, contribute to actions plans and help monitor improvements.
- To contribute feedback to the practice on patient survey results and friends and family tests by proposing developments or change.
- To support health awareness and patient education.
What should a PPG look like?
A PPG is open to every patient on the GP practice list. All communities, groups, genders, ages, ethnicities, and disabilities representing the patient list are encouraged to join. There are no other membership requirements except that patients must be registered with the practice.
PPG members should as far as possible, be representative of the practice population.
What can a PPG do?
- Discuss constructive suggestions for improving the practice and share concerns that could affect the wider practice population
- Organise health-focused events with the practice, i.e. healthy eating awareness as an information event for all practice patients to attend
- Create a patient survey with practice staff, to get feedback about the practice from the rest of the patient population
- Design a newsletter for the practice, to provide regular updates to patients
- Assist the practice in making sure their website is ‘Patient Friendly’
- Engage with the local community via fundraising events and useful health information, to ensure the PPG is representative
- Invite health and voluntary professionals to PPG meetings, for PPG members to remain informed and updated about local opportunities for patients.
What can a PPG not do?
- PPG members cannot provide any medical advice to other patients
- PPG members cannot deal with personal/medical issues
- PPG members cannot get involved in individual patient complaints during the meeting. These should be dealt with outside the meeting following the practices already established procedures
Join our Patient Participation Group
To join:
- fill out a join our Patient Participation Group form
We will be in touch shortly after we receive your form.
If you have any comments or suggestions for our PPG, then please email colefordppg@yahoo.com. Please note this email account is for the use of our PPG only, it is managed by our PPG members and is not monitored by the practice staff. Please do not include any personal, confidential, or medical information in your email, as we cannot guarantee email security.