Primary Care Bulletin - this week's round-up

26 May 2022

Dear colleagues,

Dr Claire Fuller’s Next Steps for Integrating Primary Care, published today, sets out a welcome vision that focuses on improving the access, experience and outcomes of primary care services for our communities.

The stocktake report, which was commissioned by NHS England, assesses how newly formed Integrated Care Systems and primary care could work together to improve care for people, ensuring services are joined up and as convenient as possible so that everyone can get the right care for their needs at the right time.

Thank you to all those, across ICS teams and people working in pharmacy, dentistry and general practice teams, who took the time to share their feedback with Dr Fuller.

We will now work with our colleagues across the system to implement the recommendations.

Nikki and Ursula

Ukraine crisis updates

NHS numbers for people coming to the UK from Ukraine

We wanted to confirm that people coming to the UK from Ukraine will already have an NHS number as these flow from the visa process. Please ensure you search for an existing NHS number e.g. at the point of GP registration, taking care when translating names from Cyrillic to English text.

There may be some exceptions, due the circumstances of an individual’s arrival in the UK, where a new NHS number needs to be requested.

General practice

Asthma quality improvement toolkit

An Asthma Quality Improvement Toolkit has been produced which integrates high quality and low carbon asthma care and will enable practices to safely and effectively achieve the respiratory IIF indicators. It contains educational videos and step-by-step quality improvement projects including downloadable searches for EMIS and System One practices, asthma templates and pre-written patient communication material.

We encourage practices to use this toolkit and CCGs/ICSs to prioritise education on high quality and low carbon asthma care (or better and greener asthma care) as part of their primary care learning programme.

The UK Government has also launched a new resource page on climate change and health, which shares information on why clinicians should act on the climate crisis in professional practice, specific ‘win-win’ opportunities for health and the climate crisis, what the NHS is doing already, and how clinicians can take action.

General practice - latest updates

Community pharmacy

Support the development of the new Booking and Referral Standard 

NHS Digital would like to hear from staff working in community pharmacies about the new Booking and Referral Standard (BaRS) to ensure it supports the needs of you and your patients. 

BaRS is an interoperability standard for healthcare IT systems which enables booking and/or referral information to be sent to or from care providers quickly, safely and in a format that is useful to clinicians. If you would like to take part or have any questions, please contact bookingandreferralstandard@nhs.net.

Primary care

Tell us how you are – primary care wellbeing survey
The latest wellbeing survey is now open for all staff working across primary care. The survey takes around 15 minutes to complete - please let us know how you are and how we can further support you and your teams.

Thank you to everyone who completed the previous wellbeing survey in January. Feedback highlights that wellbeing and resilience continue to remain a top concern for our primary care workforce. As we continue to work under many pressures, we encourage you and your teams to seek support if needed. Our health and wellbeing support is available on our website. This includes our award-winning coaching programme, free access to a range of wellbeing apps, staff mental health and wellbeing hubs and more.

Case study: NHS Community Pharmacy Blood Pressure Check Service

As part of our activity to support the International Society for Hypertension’s May Measurement Month campaign, to raise awareness of the risks of high blood pressure, a new case study on the NHS Community Pharmacy Blood Pressure Check Service at Ropharm Pharmacy in Newham, East London, is now available to read.

The case study sets out the benefits to patients of the service and explains how people with previously undetected high blood pressure have been identified and referred for treatment by the pharmacy team, working together with their local practices. It also includes hints and tips on how to successfully operate the service and how to encourage people aged 40 and over to get their blood pressure checked in a community pharmacy to prevent heart attacks and stroke.

Primary Medical Care Policy and Guidance Manual (PGM)

The Primary Medical Care Policy and Guidance Manual (PGM) (V4) has been updated. There is acknowledgement to Integrated Care Boards taking on delegated commissioning and essential updates aligned with current regulations and further consolidation of existing policies. There are new chapters provision of occupation health service funded by the practice, registering civil servants and their dependents, registering dependents of members of the armed forces returning from overseas postings.

Primary care staff survey pilot update

The People Plan 2020/21 committed to explore the implementation of a national staff survey for primary care to ensure that everyone working within the NHS has a voice and the opportunity to feedback on their experiences at work. 

Following a feasibility study, the Primary Care Workforce team, with the Picker Institute have undertaken a pilot Primary Care Staff Survey (PCSS) in general practice, with a small number of PCNs, to develop and test a survey methodology. The pilot is now in its final stage and participating PCNs have received their own local results. Further work evaluating the pilot and determining recommendations for future work are in progress and will be shared in the coming months.

HEE launches new career framework to boost primary care nursing

Career progression for nurses in general practice is the focus of a revised General Practice Nursing Education and Career Framework which aims to support their changing role in primary care.

The framework was developed by Health Education England (HEE) and Skills for Health and was commissioned by NHS England and Improvement. The work was commissioned as part of the GPN Ten Point Plan to develop confidence, capability and capacity for general practice nurses.

The Core Capabilities Framework sets out the skills, knowledge and behaviours that the Nursing workforce in primary care and general practice will need to apply in order to deliver high quality, personalised, compassionate care.

Wave 2 Core20PLUS connector sites confirmed

Eight sites have been selected to implement local, community-based initiatives to support the reduction of healthcare inequalities in Wave 2 of the Core20PLUS Connectors Programme. 

A number of expressions of interest were received and reviewed by a panel including representatives from the South Central and West Commissioning Support Unit (SCW), the National Healthcare Inequalities Improvement Programme, Healthwatch England, and importantly colleagues with lived experience of health inequalities. The chosen initiatives encompass the five clinical priority areas outlined in the Core20PLUS5 approach and target different communities and geographies.

The programme is due to start in summer 2022, and a third wave of the programme will be launched in autumn/winter 2022. 

Enhanced health in care homes animation

A newly updated animation explores how multidisciplinary teams might work together to improve the health of residents, and work with them to plan their proactive and personalised care as part of the Enhanced Health in Care Homes service. Seen through the story of Magdalena and her daughter, the animation shows how health and social care professionals work together in a multidisciplinary team, highlighting the various roles they play, and how, together, they help ensure that residents receive the additional care they need.

Primary and community MSK metrics survey

The Best MSK Health programme has collaboratively codeveloped draft high level metrics to support the measurement of primary and community MSK service delivery. If you’re an MSK professional, analyst, MSK lead/manager, commissioner or work in the improvement of MSK services, please tell us what you think by completing this quick online survey.

We want to find out what data matters to staff and patients, what and how data is being collected, and how this is used. The survey closes on the 30 June and takes less than five minutes to complete, and feedback will be used to inform MSK metrics development and evaluation.

CareAboutMe - new information standard
The Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB) has launched the #CareAboutMe campaign to raise awareness of the About Me information standard and the improvements it can make to people’s experience of health and care services and their outcomes. The PRSB would like to hear from any health and care professionals working across primary care to understand the difference the standard has made or will make to care.

Complete the Data Security and Protection Toolkit 

General practice, community pharmacy, dentistry and optometry colleagues are asked to please submit your annual Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT) online assessment by 30 June 2022 to provide assurance you are practising good data security and handling personal NHS information correctly. More information about what you need to do can be found on the DSPT website.  

Upcoming events and webinars

May – June. Community Pharmacist Consultation Service training for practices - Leading change - CPPE

May – June. NHS staff pension seminars

May – June. Community Pharmacist Consultation Service training for practices - PCC

May – June. Demand and Capacity series designed to help gain a deeper and practical understanding of what demand and capacity are

May – July. Public Participation online learning sessions about working with people and communities.

30 May, 3pm – 4pm. Partnerships with people and communities in primary care: The art of the possible

1 June, 3pm – 4pm. Working with health inclusion groups in primary care: What to consider

8 June, 9am – 1pm. Personalised Care at Scale - Working with Multi-disciplinary teams

8 June, 1pm – 2.30pm. Social Prescribing National webinar series. Expanding your SPLW worker workforce, targeted roles and impact

9 June, 5pm – 6pm. General practice webinar

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.

14 June, 1.00pm - 2.30pm. Wessex AHSN - FeNO Learning Collaborative 3

15 June, 2pm - 4pm. Super Skills: Involving Children and Young People - an open space discussion workshop

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

Link of the week

PODCAST - Dr Nikki Kanani: Understand what primary care looks like in your system