COVID-19 Primary Care bulletin

11 May 2020

COVID-19: today's round-up for primary care

Dear colleagues,

Thank you for all your work over the bank holiday weekend. We appreciate you making extra provision during the pandemic.

Last week, we published a letter asking primary care and community health services to help provide the best possible care for our care home residents at this difficult time.

Chief Pharmaceutical Officer Keith Ridge has asked that regional and local pharcmacy leaders bring together pharmacy teams from across the system to urgently start supporting care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.  To support this, pharmacy teams are invited to join a webinar to learn and share good practice. This will be hosted by PrescQIPP on Tuesday 12 May 1-2.30pm and will be led by Wasim Baqir, National Pharmacy Lead for Care Homes, with guest speakers. This event will cover:

• Key points from 7th May PCPA hosted webinar
• Looking at what care homes need and want from a pharmacy/ medicines optimisation service
• Update on the medicines re-use scheme
• A call to action
• Sharing best practice
• Q&A

Sign up details can be found here.

We continue to remind everyone about inappropriate and unacceptable applications of DNACPR orders to people with a learning disability and autistic people. Previous communications have been clear that decisions should be made on an individual basis and in consultation with the person themselves and / or their family;  blanket policies are “inappropriate whether due to medical condition, disability, or age”.

Over the weekend a CAS alert was sent out regarding the use of the Tiger Eye Protector Product. A test on Tiger Eye protective goggles and frames has shown the product does not meet the current requirement for splash protection required and as a result, this product should not be used in a Covid-19 setting, and is being removed from the supply chain.

Nikki and Ed

General practice

Thank you to everyone who joined the GP webinar on Thursday evening. You can access the slides and watch again on Future NHS.

NHS 111 referring into general practice and COVID-19 tests
We are aware that general practice is currently receiving referrals from a number of routes, including from new services. One such new service is the COVID-19 Clinical Assessment Service (CCAS) which is linked to NHS 111 and which provides further assessment for patients before giving a final disposition, to ensure that patients aren’t referred to their general practice unnecessarily. If a practice receives a referral from 111 services, whether from the national CCAS or from a local service, then the practice should assume clinical responsibility for the patient. The CCAS provides a clinical assessment, usually by a GP, and therefore the patient must not be re-directed back to 111 as this could result in delay of urgent clinical care.

Additionally, it is useful for practices to be aware that patients should not be directed to NHS 111 to co-ordinate testing for COVID-19. Information about testing can be found here https://www.gov.uk/apply-coronavirus-test        

Community pharmacy

Thank you to everyone who joined our community pharmacy webinar on Thursday. You can watch the event again on Future NHS.

Dentistry

The most recent guidance letter and standard operating procedure for oral health professionals is available on our website.

Optometry

The most recent guidance letter for optical staff is available on our website.

Dates for your diary 

Tuesday 12 May 1-2.30.pm - Care Home Covid 19 Webinar hosted by Wasim Baqir, National Pharmacy Lead for Care Homes

Tuesday 12 May 2-4pm - COVID-19 & BME: A conversation with the experts. This webinar will focus on the very apparent and disproportionate effects that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has had amongst BME staff, patients and communities. For any further queries, please contact england.WRES@nhs.net.

Wednesday 13 May 1.30-2.30pm - Starting out as a social prescribing link worker. This webinar aims to help new link workers understand the basics of their social prescribing link worker roles within PCNs.

Thursday 14 May 5-6pm GP webinar with Nikki and Ed

To catch up on previous primary care webinars visit Future NHS.