Primary Care Bulletin - this week's round-up

9 June 2022

Dear colleagues, 

We hope you all managed to have some downtime over the Platinum Jubilee weekend and sincerely thank colleagues who worked over the bank holiday period.  

There’s still time to register for a free ticket to attend NHS ConfedExpo if you haven’t already. There are a range of primary care sessions planned over the two days from 15-16 June, including presentations in the Primary Care Learning Theatre on the Community Pharmacist Consultation Service, improving digital access for patients in general practice, and examples of embedding MDT teams within primary care networks. It would be great to see some of you there.

Nikki and Melanie

Key updates

Monkeypox designated a notifiable disease 

Legislation was laid on 7 June 2022 which made monkeypox a notifiable infectious disease under the Health Protection (Notification) Regulations 2010 from 8 June 2022.  

This means all doctors in England are required to notify their local council or local Health Protection Team (HPT) if they suspect a patient has monkeypox. Laboratories must also notify the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) if the monkeypox virus is identified in a laboratory sample. Further details, including the latest updates on Monkeypox, are available on the gov.uk website.  

General practice

Long term conditions recovery guidance and new UCLPartners search tools

With emerging evidence that there has been an impact on non-COVID-19 long term conditions (LTC) management, general practice and systems are already starting to tackle this challenge.

This guidance, produced by the Royal College of General Practice with input from NHS England, outlines suggestions for how actions might be sequenced during the year (2022/23) to support those at highest risk or those with health inequalities. This includes suggested recommendations for system actions to support primary care in LTC recovery.

New UCLPartners search tools for EMIS and SystmOne will help practices identify patients with conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, asthma, COPD and severe mental illness who have not been reviewed in the last 12 months.

Lipid management – new search tool 

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) kills 136,000 individuals a year and CVD prevention remains a long-term NHS priority. It is estimated that 20 million people have elevated cholesterol levels, putting them at serious risk of developing CVD. A new lipid management search tool is being launched by GP system suppliers to cover atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) and the secondary prevention lipid management pathway. This is being launched with a phased approach, and we expect it to be available in all practices by the end of June.  

The search tool uses information within primary care systems and a specific set of search criteria to identify patients who may benefit from a treatment intervention or review in line with NICE guidance. The searches can be run by each general practice, and while the use of this tool is not mandatory, it is designed to be an additional resource to help optimise patient care in lipid management.  

Guidance on the use of FIT in Primary Care  

The British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) and the Association of Coloproctology of Great Britain and Ireland have produced new joint guidance on use of faecal immunochemical testing (FIT) in patients with signs or symptoms of suspected colorectal cancer. An executive summary of the guidance is available and the final guidance will be launched at the BSG conference on 21 June. The guidance recommends the use of FIT as a triage tool in primary care for patients presenting with all suspected colorectal cancer symptoms except anal / rectal mass or anal ulceration. It also recommends that those with a FIT threshold of fHb <10μg Hb/g are not referred and are managed in primary care, providing there is no ongoing clinical concern or unexplained symptoms, and appropriate safety netting is in place.

The use of FIT is now incentivised in the Directed Enhanced Service (DES) and it is expected that at least 80% of lower gastrointestinal urgent cancer referrals should be accompanied by a FIT result. For more information, please contact england.cancerpolicy@nhs.net. 

General practice - latest updates

Dentistry

Your Dentistry and Oral Health Update  

The latest Your Dentistry and Oral Health Update from 1 June is available to read online. 

Help develop the new Booking and Referral Standard 

We wish to speak to members of the dental profession about the new Booking and Referral Standard (BaRS) to ensure it supports the needs of you and your patients. 

The BaRS is an interoperability standard for healthcare IT systems which will enable bookings and/or referral information to be sent between NHS 111 and urgent dental care services quickly, safely and in a format that is useful to clinicians. If you would like to take part or have any questions, please email the Bookings and Referrals team. 

Primary care

Fuller Stocktake next steps blog 

Professor Dame Clare Gerada and Professor Sir Chris Ham have shared their view of the Fuller Stocktake report led by Dr Claire Fuller into integrated primary care, after its publication in May.  

In their blog, they look at the key areas of the Stocktake’s vision, and provide their perspective on what the next steps are for healthcare leaders to see this vision implemented. 

I’m asking What Matters to You - will you too? Thursday 9 June 2022 

Thursday 9 June marks What Matters To You? day, an opportunity to encourage colleagues to ask this question so people get care and support that’s right for them. Asking the question is about listening and hopefully understanding what matters to the person within the larger context of their life.  When people are engaged with their health care decisions, it can greatly improve their outcomes. Suzanne Rastrick, Chief Allied Health Professions Officer (England) and Rob Moriarty, Personalised Care Strategic Coproduction Group and Peer Leader, NHS England and NHS Improvement share the importance of asking the simple question ‘What matters to you?’. 

Primary care engagement event – Understanding what our colleagues need 

All primary care colleagues are invited to join an informative online event on 30 June. This will be a great opportunity to hear about current, dedicated health and wellbeing support offers available to colleagues working across primary care sectors. We will also be sharing insights and experiences from a selection of primary care health and wellbeing funded pilots that began in 2021. 

Share your ideas to five retention challenges 

The National Retention Programme is keen to hear your ideas on how we can support all NHS colleagues to succeed and make progress at every stage of their career. The team have set up a crowdsourcing platform to gather ideas and thereafter discuss and vote. Currently, we have five challenges on the platform around work/life boundaries, supporting those in early and late career, belonging, inclusion and diversity and menopause. If you have an idea that would help retain talent and deliver the best outcomes for our patients, register to join the conversation. 

The Primary Care Delegation Agreement is now live on FutureNHS

The final version of the standard Primary Care Delegation Agreement (including secondary and community services) has now been signed off by NHS England and NHS Improvement’s Board and is available to view on FutureNHS.  

The Primary Care Delegation Agreement is the legal agreement which will be used to underpin the delegation of Primary Medical, Pharmaceutical, General Ophthalmic and Dental Services,  from NHS England to ICBs from July this year. The version currently available is for information in advance of July and is not for signing.  

Upcoming events and webinars

Various dates, June. Community Pharmacist Consultation Service training for practices - leading change - CPPE 

Various dates, June. NHS staff pension seminars 

Various dates, June. Community Pharmacist Consultation Service training for practices - PCC 

Various dates, June. Demand and Capacity series designed to help gain a deeper and practical understanding of what demand and capacity are.

Various dates, June – July. Public participation online learning sessions about working with people and communities. 
 
13 June, 2pm – 3pm. CVD prevention series: data-informed interventions

14 June, 1pm – 2.30pm. Wessex AHSN - FeNO Learning Collaborative 3. A series of online events to share learning from FeNO testing implementation and use across the country. 

14 June, 1pm – 2pm. Personal health budget lunch and learn  

15 June, 1pm – 2pm.  Honours week event - health and social care sectors 

To celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, an event is being held for the health and social care sectors to hear from a variety of inspirational honours recipients and learn how you can make your own nomination. 

15 June, 2pm – 4pm. Super Skills: involving children and young people - an open space discussion workshop 

21 June, 12pm – 1pm. Wessex AHSN and NHS BSA Opioid Prescribing Comparators webinar 

22 June, 1pm – 2.30pm. Supporting the development of your personalised care ARRS funded workforce

23 June, 11am – 12pm. Supporting community health services to connect with their local shared care record

23 June, 2pm – 3pm. Supporting community pharmacy services to connect with their local shared care record

30 June, 5pm – 6.30pm. Primary care engagement event – Understanding what our colleagues need

Link of the week

 CVD Prevention Recovery: How the NHS is working to restore diagnosis and management of cardiovascular disease