Primary Care Bulletin

4 August 2022

Dear colleagues,

We have published the NHS plan for improving long COVID services, which provides an update on progress on the 10 actions set out in June 2021 and outlines the framework for deploying the £90m committed by the NHS for long COVID services during the 2022/23 financial year.

The plan, which has been developed with expert insights from those with lived experience of long COVID, clinicians and partners across the health and care system, builds on the significant progress made over the past two years and details further action to ensure that support is there for everyone who needs it, and patients requiring specialist assessment and treatment can access care in a timely way.

Advice and resources for primary care colleagues is available, as well as updated commissioning guidance for post COVID-19 services. I (Kiren) also recently reflected on the incredible amount of progress made to date regarding long COVID in a recent blog.

In other news, the UK recently experienced the first ever national emergency heatwave with the highest ever temperatures recorded at over 40’C. A huge thank you for keeping people in your communities safe during the unprecedented hot weather. With further predictions of extreme heat to come this month, we recognise the impact of the climate crisis as a health crisis, affecting vulnerable patients the most and disrupting health services and infrastructure.

To support colleagues, we have collated a suite of resources on environmental sustainability in primary care and advice for healthcare professionals on heatwaves. This includes government guidance for healthcare professionals which outlines how to support vulnerable people during a heatwave, a practical toolkit to get started on the road to sustainable healthcare and Greener Practice - a network for sustainability in primary care.

Finally, as you will have no doubt seen, Nikki Kanani has taken on a secondment joining NHS England’s Chief Delivery Office team as Director for Clinical Integration, leading on the design and delivery of an integrated clinical model for the NHS. I (Kiren) and Raj Patel will provide interim medical leadership support for primary care. We wish Nikki all the best in her new role and thank her for her leadership.

Ursula and Kiren 

General practice

Access to Health Records Act (AHRA)

As outlined in the updated general practice contractual arrangements for 22/23, from 1 August 2022, the management of applications made under the Access to Health Records Act 1990 (AHRA) for deceased patient records has changed. The patients last registered GP as the holder of the record is responsible for responding to access requests under AHRA. If a GP requires a copy of the deceased patient record that is held by Primary Care Support England (PCSE) to support an AHRA request, please refer to PCSE Guidance.

GP Connect and Summary Care Record Additional Information – a reminder

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

General Practices have the legal basis to continue to provide and use these vital services under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Common Law Duty of Confidentiality.   

Please ensure all mentions of COPI have been removed from your privacy or transparency notices. GP Connect and SCR notices are available to follow or link to from your organisation notices.  

Improvement to suspended patient records

From Monday 8 August practices will receive the EHR (Electronic Health Record) of suspended patients via GP2GP at registration, reducing the amount of time you spend on administration at summarisation.

You will still receive the Lloyd George Record and a printed version of the EHR from Primary Care Support (PCS) and you should continue to print records for patients removed from your lists without a new registration according to your usual processes.

All EHRs received by GP2GP must be manually integrated or filed within eight days or GP2GP will assume an error has occurred and the practice sending the record will be asked to print it and send it to you via PCS. Find out more about these changes on FutureNHS.

GPN National Update: monthly webinar

The next national GPN webinar will take place on Friday 5 August from 1pm – 2pm via Microsoft Teams. Jointly run by NHS England and the Royal College of Nursing, we encourage all nurses working in general practice to join as an opportunity to share best practice and for your voice to be heard by the national team.

Community pharmacy

Medicines in compliance aids – Specialist Pharmacy Service, the first stop for professional medicines advice

The NHS Specialist Pharmacy Service (SPS) understands the need to for high quality information that is readily accessible. This is why they are developing a new way of presenting stability information for medicines in compliance aids.

You can help inform this development work by sending the SPS team your local processes or procedures (SOPs) for dispensing compliance aids/dosette boxes/Nomad trays, etc. SPS also want to hear your ideas about how they can make this information resource work for you. Please contact the team by emailing he.llo@sps.direct to get involved.

Building a picture of England’s community pharmacy workforce

Community pharmacy contractors have been written to and asked to start preparing data for the NHS Community Pharmacy Workforce survey, which will launch in Autumn 2022. Developed by Health Education England in partnership with NHS England, the survey will provide an up-to-date picture of the size and shape of the community pharmacy workforce. It will ask questions about the number and roles of staff working within pharmacies. This essential data will help the NHS with workforce planning and development and inform investment in education and training.

Dentistry

Dentistry and oral health update: special safeguarding edition

As patients return to their trusted dental practices, we are conscious that you may see signs of physical and emotional trauma. A special dental update focusing on safeguarding has been published by Sara Hurley, Chief Dental Officer for England and Kenny Gibson MBE, Deputy Director for Safeguarding.

Primary care

KO41b Primary Care Complaints 2021/22 collection

The NHS has a statutory responsibility to collect information on patient complaints so trends can be identified and to demonstrate a responsive service to patient feedback. 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.

The KO41b Primary Care Complaints 2021/22 collection will be made live to general and dental practices from 1 August 2022. The collection system can be accessed through NHS Digital’s Strategic Data Collection Service (SDCS) portal for general practices and the BSA’s collection portal for dental practices.

Submissions will be collected through web-based data capture systems. There are no changes to the data items being collected this year, however, some in-built validations have been made to the general practice return aimed at improving data input. The collection will be live for six weeks and closes on 11 September. Practices will be contacted with instructions on how to access the collection portals.

Handling Difficult Situations training

Following a successful pilot in 2021/22, we are pleased to announce that places are now available on our national training programme that aims to offer our patient facing NHS people the skills and techniques to handle difficult situations with compassion. This training is open to those working across primary care in both clinical and non-clinical roles.

The RightCare Stroke toolkit is now available

The National Stroke Programme and GIRFT stroke team have been working closely with RightCare to develop a Stroke toolkit and assessment tool to bring to life the National Stroke Service Model (NSSM), GIRFT national stroke report and Integrated Community Stroke Service Model. This toolkit reflects the priorities in stroke prevention, identification, acute care, and rehabilitation, as identified in the NSSM, to help support Integrated Stroke Delivery Networks (ISDNs) to understand the priorities in stroke care along the whole stroke pathway.

Ability to upload HTML files into NHS e-RS is being withdrawn

The ability to upload HTML files into NHS e-Referral Service (e-RS) is being withdrawn from 12 August (subject to testing) due to potential security risks. This will ensure e-RS adheres to the most robust cyber security rules. You should only upload supported file types into e-RS. Advice on how to save unsupported files such as HTML to different formats to allow them to be uploaded into e-RS can be found on the NHS Digital website.

We will confirm the date of the change on our live information and services webpage. In the meantime, if you have any queries or need any support, please get in touch by emailing mailto:enquiries.ers@nhs.net.

Get involved

The Phillips Ives Nursing & Midwifery Review – call for evidence 

The Phillips Ives Review builds on the findings of the Topol Review and will provide evidence and inform strategy; ensuring that nurses and midwives are given access to the knowledge, skills and education required for safe, effective digitally-enabled practice. 

We would like to invite you to share your ideas, case studies and experiences on our engagement platform by 21 August 2022. We hope to receive feedback to input into our interim findings in September – this is your opportunity to further shape the future of nursing and midwifery practice in England. 

Funding opportunity to improve heart failure services 

We’ve launched expressions of interest for Managing Heart Failure @home, helping to improve heart failure care in the community through remote monitoring, personalised care and integrated services. Find out more in this blog from our National Clinical Director for Heart Disease or email england.home@nhs.net. Applications are open until Monday 5 September.

Applications for Speaking up Support Scheme open until 19 August

Our Speaking up support scheme remains open for applications until Friday 19 August. This redesign of the former Whistleblowers’ Support Scheme provides a range of support for NHS workers who have experienced challenges in moving forward with their professional or personal lives following a formal speak up process. 

The free online programme includes health and wellbeing and psychological support, career coaching and personal development workshops. If you or anyone in your organisation has spoken up and may benefit from the scheme, please apply now or assist your colleagues in doing so by directing them to the scheme's application webpage. Please email england.speakingupscheme@nhs.net for any further enquiries.

Healthier Futures Action Fund – now open

A new Healthier Futures Action Fund from Greener NHS is open for applications. The fund aims to support individuals and teams within NHS organisations to kick-start innovative initiatives or ideas that will improve health and patient care, reduce inequalities, and deliver value, while supporting a more sustainable health service. The fund is open to individuals and teams within the NHS, clinical and non-clinical, for bids with a suggested range of between £3,000-£15,000.

Help us to understand more about the experience of international medical graduate GP

We are looking to explore the experience of GP international medical graduates (IMGs) who are in training or have completed training in England. The research will provide insight into the support needed for IMGs through their training and employment journey. Participants will be offered a £120 incentive to thank them for their time. Please contact UK-NHS-IMG-research@ipsos.com to find out more and to take part. The privacy policy for this research can be found here.

Upcoming events and webinars

Various dates, August – December. Public Participation Online Learning Programme

5 August, 1pm – 2pm. GPN National Update: monthly webinar

17 August, 1pm – 2.30pm. Social prescribing: focusing on strengths and asset-based approaches

23 August, 11am – 12.30pm. Online tools for engagement

24 August, 11am – 12pm. Peer Leadership: Our approach to enabling coproduction

30 August, 3pm – 4pm. Introducing the health inclusion tool

1 September, 2pm – 3pm. Patient Participation groups and the art of the possible

8 September, 2pm – 3pm. New statutory guidance on working with people and communities  

Link of the week

North East and North Cumbria take an integrated approach to addressing children’s healthcare inequalities