Primary Care Bulletin - 23 June 2022 (Issue 194)

Primary Care Bulletin - this week's round-up

23 June 2022

Dear colleagues,

This week marks both Learning Disability Week and Cervical Screening Awareness week. Across the NHS, local systems and partnerships are working together to find ways that cancer screening can be made more accessible for people with a learning disability. In this short film, Jodie (aged 42), explains how she attended her first cervical screening appointment after her GP practice and learning disability nurse made the right reasonable adjustments to make her feel more comfortable and confident. We encourage GP practices to share this easy read information and a video about cervical screening for people with a learning disability to ensure more patients like Jodie come forward to attend their cervical screening appointment.

We also ask that practices ensure that patients registered with a learning disability are being offered an annual health check, to discuss their health and wellbeing needs with a clinician. I (Nikki), recently recorded this video clip about annual health checks and the importance of agreeing coproduced health action plans with patients.

Nikki and Ursula

Dr Nikki Kanani
GP and Medical Director for Primary Care,
Deputy SRO, COVID-19 Vaccination Deployment Programme
NHS England and NHS Improvement

Dr Ursula Montgomery
GP and Interim Director for Primary Care NHS England and NHS Improvement

Looking after you: coaching for the primary care workforce >>

Key updates including COVID-19

Monkeypox vaccination strategy, risk stratification and virtual management guidance

This week the UKHSA published its strategy recommending that some gay and bisexual men at higher risk of exposure to monkeypox should be offered vaccines to help control the recent outbreak of the virus.

We are due to set out details on how eligible people can get vaccinated shortly. People are advised not to come forward for the vaccine until contacted.

We have also this week published an updated risk stratification guidance document and guidance on the virtual management of monkeypox cases. Both are available on the NHS England Monkeypox website.

New PRIMIS search to identify immunosuppressed individuals for spring booster

All remaining immunosuppressed people should be identified and offered a spring booster, providing it’s been at least three months since the previous dose. The current immunosuppressed cohort list held in the COVID-19 GP dashboard has been refreshed and primary care clinicians are asked to utilise the PRIMIS search function held within GP IT systems to undertake local searches to identify and invite eligible immunosuppressed by 27 June.

PRIMIS has designed a new ‘Spring Booster Immunosuppressed Patients’ search which simplifies the process for identifying eligible immunosuppressed individuals and can be accessed via this form. This is currently only available for EMIS and TPP users - Vision users will need to use the existing search mechanism.

More information about PRIMIS search guidance is available and for further support, contact your local GP IT System Provider.

GPs and CCGs are asked to provide assurance that their PCNs have completed these actions and assurance return will be distributed via NVOC cascade during w/c 20 June.

Referring patients for COVID-19 treatments in the community

On 31 May, we sent a letter to GPs about referring highest risk patients to a COVID-19 Medicine Delivery Unit (CMDU) for assessment if they test positive. This can happen where a patient contacts a GP after not being automatically contacted by a CMDU.

In addition to referrals, hospital consultants can prescribe/administer COVID-19 treatments to their patients. Please note, this doesn’t apply to GPs, who are only required to refer patients to a CMDU.

To note, while patients can use 119 to order lateral flow tests or report their result, 119 is not able to arrange assessment/treatment, or refer patients.

COVID Oximetry @home and COVID virtual ward – updates including standing down of sitreps

From 1 July, in line with the end of COVID-19 control of patient information (COPI) notices, and to reduce data burden, COVID Oximetry @home sitrep reporting and daily feed of positive COVID patients will be stood down. COVID virtual ward questions will also be removed from the Daily Provider COVID Discharge Sitrep. Reporting for all virtual wards continues through the virtual ward sitrep.

Pulse oximeters remain available to request. Please contact england.home@nhs.net with any queries.

Update your privacy notices - GP Connect and Summary Care Record Additional Information

The temporary changes made to GP Connect and Summary Care Record Additional Information in response to the COVID-19 pandemic will continue in place beyond the end of the Control of Patient Information (COPI) Notice.

Please remove all mentions of COPI from your privacy or transparency notices for these services after 30 June 2022, when COPI expires.

We have GP Connect and Summary Care Record notices for you to follow or link to from your organisation notices.

General practice

Fit Note Changes

From the 1 July new legislation will be enacted which will allow nurses, occupational therapists, pharmacists, and physiotherapists to legally certify fit notes, in addition to doctors who are currently the only profession able to do so.

Non-statutory guidance has been developed to help individuals identify if this task is within their scope of practice as well as a new training module which should be completed before taking up this task. These new products will be available from 1 July. There will be a rollout period from this date where GP IT systems will be updated to reflect the change.

The CVD PREVENT second annual audit report is available now

The CVD PREVENT Second Annual Audit Report has been published by NHS Benchmarking Network, presenting analysis of GP recorded data for relevant patient cohorts up to March 2021. The latest report demonstrates the impact of the pandemic across the indicators of health inequality including deprivation, age, sex, and ethnicity.

This short briefing provides an overview of NHS England and NHS Improvement’s national approach on CVD Prevention Recovery, setting out four high-impact areas including using data provided by CVD PREVENT to target interventions and outlines what this means for local NHS teams and patients. A CVD PREVENT Data and Improvement Tool is also available, supporting local teams and quality improvement by helping organisations to identify variation, trends, and opportunities in the prevention and management of CVD conditions.

A new webinar series to support QOF Quality Improvement

We’re launching a new webinar series to support general practices in implementing the 2022/23 QOF Quality Improvement Modules on Prescription Drug Dependency and Optimising Access to General Practice.

The webinar series will cover a range of QI methodologies and explain how they can be applied to this year’s QOF QI modules.

Join us for our first webinar on 7 July, where we will help you to understand the QOF QI module and guidance on Prescription Drug Dependency.

Welcome to General Practice 2022

Recordings of the Welcome to General Practice event are now available on the GP Career Support Hub. The event in May was held for trainee GPs about to enter the workforce and included information about the support and career options available to them, including the Fellowship Scheme, RCGP First5 and coaching.

As well as the recording – broken into segments for ease of reference - the full slide pack and links to further information are also available.

The GP Career Support Hub provides a one stop shop for GPs for all the information and support available to them.

General practice - latest updates

Community pharmacy

New online learning: stopping the over-medication of people with a learning disability and/or autistic people (STOMP)

Working with Health Education England and MindEd, we have launched a collection of new online learning sessions to stop the over-medication of people with learning disability and/or autistic people (STOMP).

The sessions, available for health and care professionals, carer and family members, explain the meaning of STOMP, discuss opportunities to speak up if they feel someone in their care is receiving inappropriate medication and highlight how they can access reliable information about medicines.

Each of the 6 sessions can be completed at the learner's own pace and takes approximately 30 minutes. For more information and to access the sessions, visit the MindEd programme webpage.

Support the development of the new Booking and Referral Standard

We would like to speak to 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.

Dentistry

Case study: How coaching helped to manage anxiety

As part of the Looking After You coaching programme available to everyone working in a primary care role, we have developed some case studies from users of the service. This dental practitioner works in a community dental service and during COVID-19, they took on some elements of leadership and management within the team, requiring accelerated personal and professional development.

They have recommended the coaching to others in their team and within their network, finding that the coaching had been helpful with managing their anxiety and that it nudged them to think about how they were reacting, and proactively discuss how this could be changed for the better.

Primary care

Primary Care and Dental Delegation Agreement

The Primary Care Services Delegation Agreement FAQs document is now accessible on the ICS Guidance Hub. This FAQs document is a compilation of common queries received during the development and circulation of the Delegation Agreement, concerning the primary medical care, dental, ophthalmic and pharmaceutical service functions which will be delegated to ICBs.

Register your interest for upcoming Provider Selection Regime Webinars

It is now possible to register your interest for Provider Selection Regime webinars, which will take place in Autumn 2022 and provide crucial detail on the new set of rules for arranging healthcare services in England.

The webinars will outline when the Provider Selection Regime applies, how to apply the regime and the key criteria for decision making, as well as the transparency and scrutiny requirements. There will be multiple different sessions, pitched at different levels for senior leaders and practitioners, which will ensure you receive the information most relevant to your role.

Working with people and communities to tackle racial inequalities training

Free Inclusion Health training is taking place on 7 July to support Primary Care Networks (PCNs) to embed actions which tackle health inequalities into daily activities.

Join colleagues from Central Liverpool Primary Care Network (CLPCN) and Co-create to explore how they worked with people and communities to address tackling racial inequalities in Central Liverpool.

Book a session to receive practical advice and guidance tailored to your PCN. Developed with experience from Friends, Families and Travellers, National Ugly Mugs, Doctors of the World, Homeless Link and Stonewall Housing.

NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme Surveillance - inclusion of people with Lynch syndrome

Lynch syndrome is a genetic condition with no known cure, which predisposes people to a high risk of colorectal cancer. The British Society of Gastroenterology Guidelines recommend that people with Lynch syndrome should have colonoscopic surveillance every 2 years in order to reduce their lifetime risk of bowel cancer. Genetics teams are currently responsible for referring people with Lynch Syndrome to symptomatic bowel services for surveillance colonoscopy.

From 1 April 2023, people with Lynch like syndrome will be included within the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme (NHS BCSP) for surveillance. This decision follows a recommendation that was made at a clinical consensus meeting held by Bowel Cancer UK, which found that the NHS BCSP would provide an efficient, consistent, and quality assured system for people with Lynch syndrome. Work is currently ongoing to plan for the safe and effective implementation of this patient cohort within the NHS BCSP and further communications will be issued in due course.

Reminder: please complete our primary care wellbeing survey

The latest wellbeing survey is open for all staff working across primary care. Please let us know how you are and how we can further support you and your teams – closes 30 June.

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 FutureNHS space. This includes our award-winning coaching programme, support for managing patients and promotional resources to share with teams.

Applications for the Rosalind Franklin programme are now live

If you work in a clinical or non-clinical mid-level role and aspire to develop your career to lead large and complex programmes, departments, services or systems in the future, find out how you could benefit from applying for the Rosalind Franklin programme.

Delivered by the NHS Leadership Academy, the programme runs over 9 months and will give you a deeper and clearer sense of who you are, your strengths and development areas – growing your existing leadership practice and improving your personal impact. It will also give you an increased adaptability and readiness to meet the demands of senior leadership within the challenging, transforming environment of the health and care system. Find out more and apply today or email RosalindFranklin@leadershipacademy.nhs.uk.

Upcoming events and webinars

Various dates, June. NHS staff pension seminars

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

Various dates, June – July. Public participation online learning sessions about working with people and communities.

27 June. Pharmacy technician workforce expansion webinar, 10am –11.30am or 7pm – 8.30pm.

27 June, 1pm – 2pm. Emerging evidence on Long COVID: progress so far

28 June, 11.30am – 1pm. CVD Prevention webinar series: Opportunities for Community Pharmacy

29 June, 2pm – 3pm. Supporting our working carers event

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

7 July, 1pm – 2.30pm. Working with people and communities to tackle racial inequalities

7 July, 1.30pm – 3pm. QOF Quality Improvement (QI) webinar series

7 July, 5pm – 6pm. General Practice webinar