NEWS UPDATES

Primary Care Access Recovery Plans

In November Anthony Fitzgerald, Executive Place Director for Doncaster and Executive Lead for Primary Care gave an update to the NHS South Yorkshire Board on the Primary Care Access Recovery Plans.

Published in May 2023, the national delivery plan for recovering access to primary care (generally referred to as PCARP) sets out 4 priority areas for 2023/24 intended to empower people to stay healthy and manage their care without needing to see their GP.

Anthony described the approach and progress being made in these priority areas, as well as wider work being undertaken that will support and enable improved access to primary care services.

The ambitions set out in the PCARP, together with recommendations in the Fuller stocktake (May 2022) are key elements of our 2023 NHS South Yorkshire ICB Strategy for Primary Care. A significant amount of work is already being done across our system to deliver the expectations set out in the national delivery plan, however some aspects of the plan are in the very early stages of implementation.

The national requirement is to submit a second report on progress in April/May 2024, but our intention is to submit an interim report in January 2024 to highlight progress made and any potential risks to delivery in these areas.

We feel very strongly that delivery of the PCARP priorities and our wider strategy for primary care cannot be done by primary care providers alone, it requires the active engagement and support of system partners, particularly around the primary-secondary care interface.

You can read the paper in full or watch back the meeting here ICB Board meeting and minutes :: South Yorkshire I.C.B.

Working with young people to help design services

South Yorkshire Integrated Care System (ICS) Children and Young People’s Alliance have been hearing from young people about what matters most to them in the places and spaces where they live, learn, work and access health services.

You can read more about this story here: CYP Alliance working with young people to help design services :: South Yorkshire I.C.B (icb.nhs.uk)

South Yorkshire leads the UK’s digital healthcare revolution

An ambitious new digital healthcare hub in South Yorkshire is set to lead the UK’s digital health revolution and address inequalities in patient care. Led by the University of Sheffield, in partnership with Sheffield Hallam University, the £4 million South Yorkshire Digital Health Hub will improve peoples’ health and quality of life by creating innovative digital health tools that fuse data from daily life activities with NHS data.

Launched in October the centre brings together partners from across the region including: hospitals, GPs, mental health services, businesses, the South Yorkshire Integrated Care System and patient and public groups to develop technologies to address the stark health inequalities across South Yorkshire and lead the UK in the evolving digital health sector.

You can read more about this story here: South Yorkshire leads the UK’s digital healthcare revolution

NHS South Yorkshire takes top prizes at national medicines optimisation awards

NHS South Yorkshire is delighted to announce that our Medicines Optimisation Teams in Sheffield and Rotherham have received national recognition at the 2023 PrescQIPP Awards.

The Rotherham team picked up the Patient safety and Addressing Overprescribing Award for the launch of Antidepressant Review Clinics, which also won the overall PrescQIPP Silver award. The Sheffield team, in collaboration with Sheffield’s Childrens Hospital,  won this year’s Sustainability Award for their Collaborative Inhaler Returns initiative.

You can read more about this story here: NHS South Yorkshire takes top prizes at national medicines optimisation awards :: South Yorkshire I.C.B (icb.nhs.uk)

Consultation: smokefree generation and tackling youth vaping

NHS South Yorkshire is encouraging people to feedback in the UK Government’s consultation: Creating a smokefree generation and reducing youth vaping. 

This follows the prime minster announcement on 4 October that they want to:

1. Create the first smoke-free generation by raising the age of sale for cigarettes by one year every year from 2027.
    
2. Strengthen support for people to quit smoking:
   • £5m this year and £15m pa from next year for awareness campaigns
   • £70 m from next year for LA Stop Smoking Services.
   • In addition to previous commitments of £45 m over two years for 1 million free ‘swap to stop’ vapes; and vouchers up to £400 for every pregnant smoker who quits
3. Curb the rise in youth vaping by consulting on measures to reduce the appeal and availability of vapes to children while ensuring they remain available to help adult smokers quit.
4. Strengthen enforcement activity, with £30 m new funding in addition to the £3 m on illicit vapes enforcement, additional powers and an updated anti-illicit strategy.

People of all ages are being invited to take part in the consultation. You can feedback here Creating a smokefree generation and tackling youth vaping - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). The consultation closes on 6 December 2023.

General practice and the use of CVDPREVENT audit data for purposes of the National Obesity Audit

The new National Obesity Audit (NOA) supports NHS England’s Long Term Plan commitment to build an evidence base for interventions for people who are overweight and living with obesity. For it to be successful, NHS England require a link to primary care patient level data which will enable critical analysis of longitudinal weight change and improvement aims.

To avoid creating a new audit and any additional burden on general practice, NHS England is reusing existing information from general practice to support the NOA. They are looking to the CVDPREVENT (CVDP) audit to provide us with the relevant data.

A data provision notice was issued on 7 November 2023 to kindly request that all general practices ‘opt in’ and approve reuse of CVDP data via the Calculating Quality Reporting Service (CQRS).

General practice participation is critical to help to improve services for patients with overweight and obesity.  Further information about the NOA, the use of CVDPREVENT data and what it means for general practice, can be found here.

PRACTICE SUPPORT

Preparing for measles resurgence in England

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) recently issued a letter regarding preparing for measles resurgence in England. 

The UKHSA recent measles risk assessment concluded that although the risk of a UK-wide measles epidemic is considered low, a measles outbreak of between 40,000 and 160,000 cases could occur in London, due to sub-optimal uptake of the Measles Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine in the capital. Evidence also shows that, outside of London, there is a high risk of cases linked to overseas travel leading to outbreaks in specific population groups. There has been a steady rise in measles cases this year.

Read the UKHSA letter here.

Patient Initiated Digital Mutual Aid System (PIDMAS)

A new national initiative, aimed at offering patients a potential alternative choice of where to have their treatment, launched on 31 October 2023.  The Patient Initiated Digital Mutual Aid System (PIDMAS) has been created to help manage the process. 

Those eligible will be contacted by the hospital they are under the care of and given a link to the PIDMAS website to register their interest to move provider. A telephone assistance line is available to help those that are unable to access the website. Further details on eligibility are listed below, but only patients who have been waiting over 40 weeks will be contacted in the first cohort. Each NHS provider will determine the best way to contact patients, with many using text messaging. It is anticipated that around 7,000 patients will be contacted across South Yorkshire and Bassetlaw as part of the launch.

Once a patient has submitted their details, including how far they are willing to travel, this will be reviewed by the hospital they are currently under the care of. If a patient opts to request to move (the options are 50 miles, 100 miles or nationally) the ICB will make every effort to identify an appropriate alternative hospital. However, there may be circumstances in which it is not clinically appropriate for a patient to move to a different hospital or alternative capacity is not available.

If an alternative provider is identified, the patient will be contacted and asked if they would like to proceed. The patient will remain with their current provider throughout the process until the offer from the  alternative provider is secured. If an alternative hospital isn’t found, the patient will receive an appointment with their current provider as soon as one becomes available. Neither the NHS or patients will incur additional costs if patients choose to accept an offer of treatment at an independent sector provider.

Patients have been advised that they should wait to be contacted and that they do not need to contact their hospital or GP practice. However, it is anticipated that a small number of patients may do so, therefore it is important that staff in general practice are aware of the PIDMAS initiative.

Criteria for cohort 1:  Those patients who meet all of the following criteria are to be invited to register their request to move provider, should they wish to take up the offer: 

• Patients referred to routine elective, consultant led services.
• Waiting over 40 weeks (RTT clock start date before 22nd January 2023).
• Patients on an admitted pathway who have had a decision to admit (DTA), but without a TCI date within the next 8 weeks.
• Patients on a non-admitted pathway who have not yet had a first outpatient appointment and have not got an appointment date within the next 8 weeks. 
• Patients who are not a tertiary referral
• Are not under the age of 18.  

The national plan is for providers to communicate with further cohorts of patients in a staged process, so that by March 2024 all patients waiting over 18 weeks (including those aged under 18), will be invited to indicate if they wish the ICB to seek an alternative provider for them. 

Swamped with BP readings? We were.

Article by Dr Dan Clark, cardiovascular disease clinical lead for South Yorkshire

BP readings can come from all directions and we observed that this led to an inconsistent approach in how readings were handled and often led to unnecessary repeat readings, conflicting home and clinic readings, poor patient journeys and wasted GP appointments.

As a practice, we set up a task and finish group with a representative from each of our teams (GP, health care assistant, receptionist, pharmacy etc) and devised the attached process in just 2 x 1 hour online sessions using a process mapping tool. 

We identified where there was uncertainty or different ways of working and discussed these to come to a consensus.  We met a second time with the proposed process drawn up.  As a team we walked through the process virtually, resulting in further tweaks before introducing this to the whole team in a practice meeting. We recognise that everywhere works differently but the approach taken may help you to think through how you manage blood pressure results in your practice.

To briefly explain the process, the top box covers how to handle a blood pressure reading in clinic, whether this is a GP, nurse or health care assistant.  The lower box covers BP readings coming in from external sources.  We felt that our ARRS pharmacy technicians were best placed to handle these; to calculate the average BP and deciphering if the BP was within target.  We wanted to remove GPs from managing BP as much as possible, so except in the case of extremely high readings our ARRS pharmacists titrate BP medications.

All South Yorkshire practices can find a specific high blood pressure data resource at: British Heart Foundation Data

For more information contact Dr Dan Clark daniel.clark7@nhs.net and Ebun Ojo ebun.ojo@nhs.net are the joint cardiovascular disease clinical leads for South Yorkshire

NEW Fit note resources

ACPOHE is a professional network of the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and they would like to share their new Fit note resources with GP practices

The resources are available to download from Work & Health Learning and Development Hub - https://acpohelms.co.uk/login.php (click Free Guest Access and go to Resource Library).

The resources include:

1. A 6-minute podcast to outline our new resources and why they are important
2. A video (to play on screen in GP reception waiting rooms) to help manage patient expectations of 'fit note' certification.  This is 1 minute in length.
3. A 2-minute video aimed at increasing awareness to GPs of the role of FCPs, particularly around work conversations and completion of the fit note. Please share this with the GPs you work alongside.
4. An 8-minute training video, which is a reminder of the importance of keeping people at work to help health outcomes (aimed at GPs, FCPs, other healthcare workers in primary care.
5. Infographics to patients on what is the fit note, and how to get the most out of your fit note (ideal for notice boards within GP practices).
6. Infographics to healthcare professionals on completing the fit note (a quick easy reminder to all involved in completing the fit note).
7. Completed fit notes, with audio presentation on a variety of case studies.

Improving access in general practice campaign

Earlier this year NHS England launched the delivery plan for recovering access to primary care and in that plan, there was a commitment that a communications and engagement campaign would be developed to enable patients and staff to understand new ways of working in general practice and to promote alternative (non-general practice) access routes to the public, in particular, community pharmacy and self-referral options.

We are pleased to inform you that the public campaign has recently launched and the campaign materials are available for download from the Public Health England campaign resources site.

We encourage you all to support this campaign and use the opportunity to promote the great work happening across general practice and wider primary care. 

This may include displaying posters on digital screens and notice boards, updating websites and telephone messages, updating social media channels and using batch texting.

NHS South Yorkshire communications colleagues have been working on this campaign and are available to support you—please do reach out to them for support if you need it. 

In addition, please see the links below to other campaigns that may be useful, although we appreciate you may already be sighted on these:

• Your general practice team  
• Staff respect  
• Looking after you coaching  
• General practice inclusive access routes  
• Supporting general practice referrals into community pharmacy consultation service  
• General practice enhanced access 

TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES

New to Primary Care MDT Programme online sessions

Available for all team members.

Are you new to the primary care team?

These online, interactive sessions are for you!

Learn about key elements of primary care to help you better understand the who and the why!

• Roles & Processes: 14 November 9am – 12pm
• Health Inequalities: 14 December 9am – 12pm

See the attached flyer for details and registration links.

Carers Webinars

If you work anywhere in the wider Primary or Community Care, these working lunch webinars are for you!

Whether you work in general practice, community dentistry, community eye care or in a high street pharmacy, there is information available for you to be able to:

• Identify carers
• Access digital resources
• Become an unpaid carers ambassador

Please see the attached flyer to register for the webinars and we’ll share with you some great tips on how you can help this unpaid and often unsupported sector of our population.

Children and Young People's Asthma Training

The National Capabilities Framework for Professionals who care for Children and Young People (CYP) with Asthma is aimed at anyone who may encounter a child with asthma as part of their job or role.

The training is available at 4 tiers with the first being suited to reception staff and HCAs, the third Tier is aimed at GPs and Practice Nurses managing asthma.

This accredited online training has been developed by NHS England CYP national asthma transformation programme to ensure staff have skills and knowledge that are required to safely care for CYP with asthma.

Click here for access via ESR https://my.esr.nhs.uk/dashboard/web/esrweb and here for access via e-lfh https://portal.e-lfh.org.uk/Catalogue/Index?HierarchyId=0_57584&programmeId=57584. 

Kooth mental health support – signposting and webinar

Kooth is completely anonymous, allowing young people to access mental health support without fear of judgement. Their service is BACP-accredited, free at the point of use, and doesn't have any thresholds or waiting lists, so patients can easily get support today.

If you'd like to signpost your patients to Kooth, take a look at their digital information hub which has a wealth of resources you can share with your patients, as well as our Kooth TV screen poster for your waiting rooms.

Kooth are running free KoothTalks webinars for professionals:

• Kooth and Qwell: suicide prevention and awareness
  • Tues 21 Nov, 1-2pm
  • Wed 29 Nov 4-5pm

If you can't attend but would still like to listen, please sign up and we'll email you a recording after the session takes place.