A Patient Participation Group (PPG) is where a group of health professionals and patients can come together to address issues that effect health and health services in their local community.

Its key role is to:

• Enable patients to have a say on how the practice operates
• Provide feedback on new systems within the practice such as booking an appointment
• Act as a sounding board for ideas
• Support the practice to provide a high quality of care and service delivery.

Montrose Patient Participation Group (MPPG) works with the local GP surgeries and the wider healthcare team to improve provision for patients at the Links Health centre.

What the MPPG has achieved for our patients so far

• Clarified travelling expenses for patients going to and from hospital for those on benefits and low income. Download a Travelling Expenses application form and for more information please see Healthcare Travel Costs Scheme (HTCS).
• See Assistance with Travel Expenses for visits to outpatients, or ward within NHS Tayside.
• Made the public aware of Participatory budgeting, it is a form of citizen participation in which citizens are involved in the process of deciding how public money is spent. Local people are often given a role in the scrutiny and monitoring of the process following the allocation of budgets. Costs of participatory budgeting can vary anywhere between £400 and £40,000 depending on the size and the scope of the project.
• In February 2020, we had a presence in reception and helped patients to access online services and make appointments and order repeat prescriptions online.
• December 2020 seen the outcome of an analysis and the use of appointments.

Things in the pipeline for the MPPG

• Fundraising and obtaining grants to purchase a cabinet to display two busts (one was an unnamed woman on display in Montrose Royal Infirmary until it closed, the other Chasser Moir, which is currently being held in the stores of Angus Councils Museum Department.
• Arranging for the installation of an electronic bus timetable in the Health Centre.