COVID-19 Primary Care bulletin

17 April 2020

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

Dear primary care colleagues,

On 12 April, Pauline Philip, National Director for Urgent and Emergency Care, and Sarah-Jane Marsh, National CEO for Staff Testing, wrote out to NHS England and NHS Improvement’s Regional Directors, EPRR regional leads and CEOs of NHS trusts/foundation trusts to announce that the testing of NHS staff had been expanded to include a wider group of staff and household members across the NHS, including individuals working in primary care, community services and other staff as determined locally. The letter also included details of the criteria that has be to be met to be eligible for testing. 

Regional Chief Executive leads have been appointed to lead and coordinate the testing of NHS staff and so if you are not already aware of your local testing arrangements please contact your local CCG Accountable  Officer/ STP lead.  

In addition to this, and as part of an effort to ensure all available capacity is being utilised, the Department of Health and Social Care in collaboration with the Care Quality Commission, is opening up access to national testing capacity as a short-term and time-limited measure in some specific places. Individuals who meet the eligibility criteria for testing will just need to fill in their details via the CQC form and they will get an email back giving them an appointment time at one of the regional testing centres​ near to them with available capacity.  

If you are already booked in or are awaiting a test through local NHS arrangements, please consult with your local testing service before booking separately through this national offer.

Coaching support
Some of you may have heard in yesterday’s general practice webinar that an individual coaching support offer will be made available by the end of next week to the frontline primary care workforce, both clinical and non-clinical, to proactively support staff through Covid-19 and beyond.  The aim is that this will provide staff with opportunities to process experiences, develop coping skills, deal with difficult conversations and develop strategies for self-management in difficult circumstances.

This service is being developed in collaboration with the Royal College of General Practitioners and will complement the wider range of health and wellbeing resources that was launched last week at  www.people.nhs.uk.  Primary care staff will be able to easily register via an online platform at www.people.nhs.uk and book individual coaching from an experienced coach in a way and at a time of day that suits them. 

A launch webinar is taking place next Friday 24 April 3pm to share specific details about the service.

In the meantime, if you are a member of the primary care workforce we would love your views on the service before it is finalised and launched.  Please join a webinar next Monday 20 April at 5pm to see what we’re proposing to offer and to help us decide on a name! For any information, please contact kate.tattershall@nhs.net.

Raj and Ed

Community pharmacy

Easter opening of pharmacies – claims process

The claims process for those pharmacies who were open on Good Friday and Easter Monday has now become live. From Friday 17 April until midnight on Tuesday 5 May, pharmacy contractors will be able to log on to the NHSBSA MYS portal to declare their opening hours and claim the appropriate payment. The payments will be made as part of April submissions, and paid to contractors on 1 June. These payments will not show on the standard payment schedule, but NHSBSA will write to all contractors who claim any hours on the two bank holidays to confirm the payment.

Pharmacy Clinical Assessment Service
To support the NHS 111 and IUC response to the Coronavirus pandemic a Pharmacy Clinical Assessment Service (CAS) has been established aligned with the national COVID-19 CAS . The service went live at 16.00 on Thursday 16 April. It will run 08.00 – 20.00 for 7 days a week with a team of pharmacists.

The aim of the service is to:

• Increase clinical capacity within services sitting behind the NHS 111 Online access route in order to free up other clinical disciplines to focus on COVID-19 related demand;
•  Re-deploy pharmacists employed in other roles (who have volunteered by agreement with their employer) and returning pharmacists (those who have left the NHS and have volunteered to return) to manage other routine casemix calls that use the established skill set of pharmacists.

The case mix of calls for the Pharmacy CAS has been adapted from the existing NHS Community Pharmacist Consultation Service (NHS CPCS) symptom groups and those calls that would normally be handled by IUC CAS Pharmacists so that the Pharmacy CAS will be available to 111 providers at time of high demand.  111Online users will also be able to select “speak to a pharmacist today” as an alternative to booking a call back from an urgent primary care service. Patients with declared Coronavirus symptoms will be assessed by clinicians through the COVID-19 CAS who may then transfer patients direct to a pharmacist for specific medicines advice to support self care.

As with NHS CPCS, the Directory of Services (DoS) will enable the appropriate clinical outcomes to be directed to the Pharmacy CAS. The service offer will be reviewed on an ongoing basis with a view to expanding its activity and scope in a phased approach to ensure safety.

The pharmacists all undergo the same training as the COVID-19 CAS clinicians with some additional training to support the pharmacy specific role using the learning from the current IUC pharmacist training programme.

Dentistry 

Health minister Jo Churchill has written to all MPs outlining arrangements to ensure access to urgent dental care is maintained during the pandemic period.

Redeploying the dental workforce
Guidance has now been published on redeploying the clinical dental workforce to support the NHS clinical delivery plan for COVID-19

Additional information

NHS Volunteer Responders
Professionals working across primary care are encouraged to take advantage of the NHS Volunteer Responders programme to refer patients who are considered to be vulnerable and at risk.

Guidance for health professionals on how to refer is available. All NHS healthcare staff - and local government staff, who need to use their gov.uk email addresses -  can make requests via the NHS Volunteer Responders referrers’ portal or by calling 0808 196 3382. Read more about how the referrals work here.

Dates for your diary 

Digital First webinars on practical steps that practices should take to establish a total triage model:

20 April, 11.30am-12.30pm: remote total triage using Doctorlink

21 April, 12.30-1pm: COVID19 Digital Nurse Network

23 April, 4.30-5pm: using accuRx throughout COVID19 for video consultations 

Regular primary care webinars
22 April, 7-8pm: Community pharmacy webinar with Keith Ridge and Ed Waller

23 April, 5-6pm: Primary care webinar with Nikki Kanani and Ed Waller

Coaching support webinars
20 April, 5pm – Feed your comments into the coaching support proposal

24 April , 3pm : Coaching support launch webinar

Nikki and Ed's Link of the Day

Resuscitation Council Statement on PHE PPE Guidance