COVID-19 Primary Care bulletin

5 May 2020

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

Dear primary care colleagues,

On 1 May 2020, the United Kingdom’s CMOs and Medical Directors of Public Health England and NHS England sent a message via the Central Alert System to thank all healthcare staff for their efforts in responding to the COVID-19 epidemic. The message was sent to all colleagues working in primary care.

Our next webinar for those working in community pharmacy will be held on Wednesday 6 May with Keith Ridge and Ed. We do hope you can join us.

Nikki will be part of panel on a webinar, to be held on 6 May 2020 at 6.30pm, to discuss ethnicity, COVID-19 and primary care. The webinar is for primary care colleagues to learn about the impact of COVID-19 on BAME communities and share practice tips and ways to support staff. Register to join and hear from Prerana Issar, NHS Chief People Officer; Dr Chaand Nagpaul, BMA Council Chair; Anne Marie Rafferty, RCN President; and Ravi Sharma, Director for England, Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

It was announced on 29 April by the Home Secretary, that free visa extensions will be automatically granted to more crucial overseas health and care workers. Frontline workers, including pharmacists, with visas due to expire before 1 October 2020 will receive an automatic one-year extension. This will apply to those working both in the NHS and independent sector and include their family members.

We receive a number of questions about shielding patients through our regular webinars. The article below will give some clarification on this. Please do take the time to read this. Thank you for your continued support and patience on this incredibly important issue.

Nikki and Ed

General practice 

An update on shielding patients for general practice

The latest update of the Shielded Patient List, based on the NHS Digital GP Extraction Service, has identified a small number of patients who will be advised to shield via a centrally generated letter and text message.  Flags will be added to the GP records for these patients along with patients identified by hospital clinicians this week.  The addition of flags and distribution of central letters is expected to be complete by Thursday 7 May.   

Any patients you locally identified as clinically extremely vulnerable prior to 28 April should now be recognised by the Government support website.  Thank you for informing all of these patients, using the standard letter previously provided.  If you have not done so, please ensure that you write to these patients as soon as possible.  Please use the attached updated version of the letter.  This contains the same information but confirms that the Government is currently advising people who are clinically extremely vulnerable to shield until 30 June, subject to ongoing review.  People who you have identified locally and added to the registry will be sent text messages later this week and contacted early next week by the Government support service call centre if they have not yet registered online or by phone.  It is therefore important that you have contacted them to confirm that they have been identified as clinically extremely vulnerable. 

We are aware that some people who believe they have registered for support on the website have not received it.  We have fed this back to the Government service and are working with them to resolve issues with the website and call centre. Please advise people to re-register ensuring they have entered the correct NHS number on the website and their name and address as used in their NHS records. 

We have received a number of queries about the length of time patients should shield for. Government is currently advising people to shield until at least the 30 June (irrespective of when the letter from the NHS was received) and is regularly monitoring this position.  Further information about shielding will be published in due course by Government and individuals currently shielding notified. 

As a reminder, the websites below may contain helpful information about these patients / process:

• Highest clinical risk being advised to shield identification methodology
• Shielded patient list guidance for general practice
• Summary of support offers available to those shielding and other vulnerable groups (Slide deck available on FutureNHS platform – sign up required)
• Government’s shielding guidance

Please note: A similar update to this will be sent to hospital clinicians asking them, if they have not already done so, to review their patient lists and identify anyone who should be added to the clinically highest risk registry and advised to shield. We have asked them to speak to any such patients, and to send them a copy of the standard NHS letter, as well as to notify the patient’s GP that they have been added to the list, and to submit a list of additional patients to NHS Digital.

The role of physiology and oximetry webinar

Last week, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the AHSN network held a webinar on COVID-19: Patient Assessment - the role of physiology and oximetry. The hour long event included presentations from Dr Jonathan Leach RCGP Hon Sec and COVID lead, Dr Alison Tavare West of England AHSN, and Dr Simon Stockley, RCGP Lead for Acute Deterioration and Sepsis with a question and answer session at the end.

Community pharmacy

Payments for the home delivery of medicines and appliances service during the COVID-19 outbreak

Community pharmacy contractors are now able to claim payment on the Manage Your Service (MYS) portal . Contractors must submit their claims for payment monthly via the MYS platform no later than the 5th of the following month.

Dentistry 

Ceasing of dental practice’s face-to-face contact with patients

As outlined in our letter to the dental profession on 25 March 2020, the design and intent behind the cessation of routine dentistry remains for the safety of patients and of dentists and their teams during the COVID-19 pandemic. We wanted to continue to stress the importance that individual practices, unless they are identified by regions as part of the urgent dental system in a/their region (i.e. they have been designated as providers of face-to-face urgent dental care), should not see patients face to face. 

Optometry

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

Additional information

Primary care wellbeing survey
We would like to understand the current wellbeing of the primary care workforce, and invite you to take part in a short survey undertaken by the Institute for Employment Studies to support this and to support the wider evaluation of the #lookingafteryoutoo  Primary care coaching offer. The survey will take no longer that 5 minutes to complete and will contribute to our ongoing response to support your wellbeing.

Digital Primary Care Webinars – COVID-19 Clinical Assessment Service

The NHSX Digital Primary Care programme is delivering a weekly webinar series across the different digital and transformational projects being rolled out across the NHS during COVID-19 and beyond. 

The first webinar takes place on Tuesday 5 May 2020 5:00pm – 6:00pm. Dr Phil Koczan, GP and Digital Clinical Champion and Michelle McDermott, GP Connect Lead at NHS Digital will discuss the COVID Clinical Assessment Service (CCAS) and what this means for general practice. Open to NHS staff, book your free place now 

Dates for your diary 

Upcoming webinars

• 5 May, 5-6pm: COVID-19 Clinical Assessment Service (CCAS)

• 6 May, 5-6pm The role of mental health services and support for rough sleepers

• 6 May, 6.30-7.30pm: Ethnicity, COVID-19 and Primary Care webinar

• 6 May, 7-8pm: Community Pharmacy webinar with Keith Ridge and Ed Waller

• 7 May, 11am: Homeless Health webinar

• 7 May, 5-6.30pm: Primary Care webinar with Nikki Kanani and Ed Waller including a Q&A session

​To catch up on previous webinars visit Future NHS

Nikki and Ed's Link of the Day

Public Health England: Public health nurses working for all blog