Primary Care Bulletin

1 September 2022

Dear colleagues,

Next week (5-11 September) is Know Your Numbers Week, an annual awareness initiative by Blood Pressure UK to promote the importance of regular blood pressure checks, especially for the over 40s.

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) affects over 6 million people in England. One in four premature deaths are caused by CVD and it is a leading cause of disability.

This year, the NHS is raising awareness of the access points that people can get their blood pressure checked, including community pharmacies. Our latest figures show that between October 2021 and 1 July 2022 the NHS Community Pharmacy Blood Pressure Check Service has delivered over 275,000 blood pressure and ambulatory blood pressure monitoring checks to people aged 40 and over.

To date around 8,423 pharmacies are set up to deliver the service across England and we estimate that 4,400 lives could be saved in the next five years by increasing the number of checks carried out.

Please help us to support the public to get their blood pressure checked for free at an NHS community pharmacy, an NHS Health Check appointment offered to adults in England aged 40-74, at home or at their local GP surgery. Find resources and more information at NHS UK and the British Heart Foundation website.

Kiren and Ali

Key updates including COVID-19

Green Book update: Eligibility of people with a learning disability for the COVID-19 autumn booster vaccination

As outlined in the recent Autumn COVID-19 booster and flu system letter, this update confirms that people aged five and over on the GP learning disability register are eligible for the COVID-19 autumn booster vaccine following updated Green Book guidance. Please offer the COVID-19 autumn booster vaccination to everyone on the GP learning disability register and their carers.

General practice

Supporting uptake of flu vaccination for people with a learning disability

As part of our aim to reduce premature mortality amongst people with a learning disability, we ask colleagues to review the innovative approaches used during COVID-19 vaccination roll out and consider similar approaches for flu vaccination. This includes using the many more vaccinators available to the system, their knowledge and skills about people with a learning disability and their need for reasonable adjustments, to ensure successful vaccination. 

Emergency Registered Practitioner (ERP) register closing on 30 September 2022 

The Emergency Registered Practitioner (ERP) provisions, which were created to allow suitable doctors to gain temporary emergency registration or a licence to practise in order to support the COVID-19 pandemic, will be repealed on 30 September 2022. 

Any doctors included on the performers list under the ERP provisions on this date will be removed from the list and will not be permitted to work in general practice. NHS England has worked with this group of doctors to ensure that should they wish to remain in practice beyond the emergency period, that they were supported to do so.  

Employers are advised to check that any GP contracted with or employed throughout the emergency period, who intends to continue to work beyond 30 September 2002, is legally able to do so. 

GP Bureaucracy Busting Concordat launched

On 23 August, a new Bureaucracy Busting Concordat was published by the Government. It sets out seven principles, which were developed with input from the British Medical Association (BMA) and Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), that aim to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy and administrative burdens, ensuring that clinicians have more time for patients. These include encouraging digitisation, increased co-design and the use of other relevant professionals wherever possible.

Electronic clinical correspondence using Docman 10/7

Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) will be sending clinical correspondence electronically to general practices in England using Docman 10/7. The new process, starting on Monday 12 September, will only apply to GP practices that can electronically file correspondence through Docman 10/7 into their electronic patient record systems.

Subcontract for the provision of services related to the Network Contract Directed Enhanced Service 2022/23

NHS England has developed a standard subcontract for the provision of services related to the Network Contract DES. Primary Care Networks may use this to subcontract parts of the Network Contract, including Enhanced Access, to a third-party provider organisation. It is intended that using this subcontract means that any staff working for that organisation and spending at least 50% of their time working on the subcontract would be able to access the NHS Pension Scheme from 1 April 2023, which may not be guaranteed under other arrangements. For any further information please contact your regional team.

Investment and Impact Fund (IIF) and Network Contract DES Indicators: SNOMED Codes Tool

NHS England has released the 22/23 Indicators and SNOMED Codes tool to support PCNs in meeting the requirements of the IIF and Network Contract DES indicators. The tool enables users to view the SNOMED codes associated with each indicator to ensure that PCNs can accurately code their activity. To use the tool, users select the relevant indicator ID, which loads a list of associated SNOMED codes and their descriptions. A user guide is provided on the first page of the tool. The tool currently only contains indicators collected via the GP Extraction Service (GPES).

Community pharmacy

Help support patients to get their blood pressure checked

Around one third of adults in the UK have high blood pressure which rarely has noticeable symptoms but if untreated, increases the risk of heart attack and stroke.  Know Your Numbers week (5-11 September) raises the importance of getting your blood pressure checked. This is a great opportunity for community pharmacies to support this campaign, talk to patients about their blood pressure and offer NHS blood pressure checks to over 40s.

Dentistry

Your NHS dentistry and oral health update

The latest dental update is out now, which includes an update on the new asymptomatic testing requirements, next steps on system reform and more.

Submit your KO41b - deadline approaching

It is a statutory and contractual requirement for primary care providers to declare brief details of complaints associated with their NHS care by submitting a KO41b return. If you’re a dental provider, you must submit a KO41b return for each contract you hold and brief details of complaints made by or on behalf of patients between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022. You’ll need your contract number(s) to get started, which you can find in Compass. The deadline to submit is 11:59pm on Friday 9 September 2022.

Primary care

Funding to improve heart failure services

Applications close on Monday 5 September for Managing Heart Failure @home, an opportunity to access funding and improve heart failure care through remote monitoring, personalised care and integrated services. Professor Nick Linker, National Clinical Director for Heart Disease talks more about the approach in this blog. Find out more on FutureNHS or contact the team at england.home@nhs.net.  

Help us fill the gap in understanding the IMG GP experience

If you know an international medical graduate (IMG) who did GP training in England but is not working in general practice, please encourage them to talk to Ipsos UK.

We want to understand the experience of GP IMGs who are training or have completed training in England. We’ve had a great response so far, but we need to speak to more people who trained but are not working as GPs. For example, working in a hospital or elsewhere in England, or those working outside of England. Participants will be offered a £120 incentive. Please email UK-NHS-IMG-research@ipsos.com for more information.

Upcoming events and webinars

Various dates, September – December. Public participation online learning programme

Various dates in September. Environment - NHS Net Zero webinar series

2 September, 1pm – 2pm. GPN National Update

5 September, 2pm – 3.30pm. CVD Prevention webinar series: Increasing public education

7 September, 12.30pm – 1:15pm. BMJ Best Practice for primary care

8 September, 12pm – 12.30pm. Safeguarding webinar for General Practice Safeguarding Leads and Caldicott Guardians: Offering patients access to their future health information

12 September, 12.30pm – 1.30pm. Priorities for Long COVID

14 September, 1pm – 2.30pm. Faith organisations and social prescribing

15 September, 12.30pm – 2pm. Long COVID interventional research studies

21 September, 2pm - 4pm. CVDPREVENT: Using data to drive system change

28 September, 11am – 12.30pm. Super Skills: It's a Kinda Magic -  creatively engaging and connecting with people

28 September, 1pm – 2.30pm. Commissioning of social prescribing and community support

4 October, 9.30am – 4.10pm. Every breath you treat - understanding the impact of air pollution across the life course.

12 October, 9am – 5.15pm. NHS Genomics healthcare summit.