Newcastle and North Tyneside
Local Medical Committee
http://www.nntlmc.co.uk
LMC Newsletter June
2016
CQC Inspection Experience.
Officers from the LMCs meet with the CQC inspectorate on a six monthly basis. This allows an opportunity to report back the experience of practices both good and bad at a very high level.
The LMC often hears about the bad experiences but no doubt there will be a range and we would like to give a balanced report back.
A short survey will be sent around all practices in the Northern Region in the near future and we hope practices will feed back.
For any confidential feedback regarding individual inspectors please ring one of the officers directly who will keep your confidence.
Newcastle Carers.
A carer is someone who provides unpaid care and support to a family member, friend, partner or neighbour who has a disability, has an illness, is frail, has mental health difficulties or has alcohol or drug related problems.
Newcastle Carers is a VCS organisation, commissioned by the CCG and LA delivering a single point of contact for adult carers (over 18) requiring information, advice and support. To be eligible to access services carers should be caring for someone who lives in Newcastle. Carers can access the service regardless of the age or condition of the person(s) they care for, whether they are caring for 5 or 50 hours a week. We provide personalised support for carers to:-
· Understand and feel confident in their role
· Navigate the system – who to go to about what, what are their rights and entitlements, able to make informed choices
· Get the balance right between caring and looking after themselves
…so that the caring role is sustainable and healthy
Through the CCG Innovation Fund we’ve been working with a small number of practices in the City. We want to have a better understanding of where GP practices are in relation to identifying and supporting carers. This information will help us identify how we can work more effectively with practices in future.
So, here is the link to the Newcastle based GP self-assessment questionnaire http://goo.gl/forms/IU3HChiylzjJznBW2
North Tyneside Carers’ Centre.
Established in 1994, North Tyneside Carers’ Centre is an independent charity (1051472 ) and a network member of Carers Trust. The Centre is the only generic service supporting adult and young carers in North Tyneside. Our mission statement is:
To improve the quality of life for carers in North Tyneside
Support we provide which benefits young and adult carers includes
¨ Advocacy ¨ Family support
¨ Advice & information ¨ Counselling
¨ Emotional support ¨Training for carers and professionals
¨ Support groups ¨ Activities and events
¨ Alternative therapies
For further information or to make a referral please contact the Centre on 643 2298 or at www.northtynesidecarers.org.uk
North Tyneside Carers’ centre is working in partnership with North Tyneside Council and North Tyneside Clinical Commissioning Group to deliver the North Tyneside Commitment to Carers Action Plan 2015-16. Inresponse to the NHS Commitment to Carers they would like to understand what GP practices have in place to identify and support carers locally?
The Carers’ Centre would be grateful if all practices could take a few minutes to complete the online survey by clicking on the link below.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2JS8GWY
Identification (IDs) for GPs
The LMC has become aware of an issue when a visiting GP didn’t have ID and the patient did not know the doctor. Many people, especially the elderly, do have concerns about callers to their houses and it is necessary that IDs are available. This is more relevant to F2s and registrars especially.
Quality First Web Portal
As part of the GPC’s workforce engagement work a "Quality first" resource webpage has been implemented. This is aimed at LMCs, practices and individual GPs, as a single portal for the range of practical ways in which they can manage workload to deliver safe care, with “how to”, and with real case examples of positive change. Following an announcement at the LMC Conference, the pages are now live on the new BMA website: www.bma.org.uk/qualityfirst. They cover areas including:
· Managing inappropriate workload
· Guidance on establishing or joining a GP network or federation
· Collaboration and working at scale
· Technology – new ways of working
· Patient empowerment
· Assessing and negotiating workload
EMIS Patient Entries
As part of Patient Services there is a configuration within the EMIS system that allows patients to make an entry in to their own medical record that sits in the patientconsultation screen.
A patient in a practice has made an entry with comments about astaff member. EMIS WEB team has confirmed that aconfiguration within the system does allow patients to put entries on to their consultation screen.
Many practices may not be aware of this configuration and this is a service that is the choice of the practice and notcontractual, at the moment.
CQC Requests to Access Personal Medical Records.
The LMC has become aware that when filling out the form to adopt a partnership role or be the registered manager, the form asks for access to the personal medical record.
We believe that this is outwith the authority of CQC, and we have experience that when access is refused the application proceeds anyway. We believe that unless there is a good medical reason to access your medical record, this should be denied.
This has been picked up by GPC and they are taking it up nationally with CQC.
Issue with QRISK®2 Calculator in SystmOne.
As you may be aware, there is an issue involving the QRISK®2 Calculator in SystmOne, run by TPP.
Advice is available from the BMA about the prioritisation of work with respect to QRISK2 miscalculations.
See letter from the BMA http://www.nntlmc.co.uk/styled-3/downloads-28/index.html
Guidance for Doctors Treating Transgender Patients.
A number of doctors have raised this issue with the LMC and it has been taken up nationally by the GPC. This guidance from the GMC seems to conflict with its own Good Medical Practice and is not helpful to GPs.
The fundamental problem is that the service has been incompletely commissioned by NHSE and when we wrote to them about this they referred us to the GMC guidance!
If GPs are uncomfortable in prescribing for this group of patients then they should speak to the specialist concerned informing them that they do not have the expertise or knowledge to do so.
Hopefully this will be sorted out soon!
LMC Website Blog
This contains a lot of important information on the following issues:
· Latest LMC minutes available..
· Sessional GPs eNewsletter June 2016
· GP News from the Chair...
· GPC News Issue 11 now available...
See http://www.nntlmc.co.uk/blog/index.html
GPC News, GP News from the Chair and local issues.
This months GPC News contains some important information on:
· BMA GP committee chair’s newsletter
· DWP guidance on providing medical reports
· FP10s – England only
· GP trainees subcommittee elections
· General Practice Forward View – proposed engagement events - England
· GPC regional representative elections
· Measures to control workload
· Recognition of general practitioners as specialists
· Sessional GPs e-newsletter
For national issues from the GPC with relevant links etc. please see the LMC website: http://www.nntlmc.co.uk/styled-3/downloads-2/index.html and http://www.nntlmc.co.uk/page55/index.html
Also please watch your LMC Blog http://www.nntlmc.co.uk/blog/index.html
Use of the LMC RSS feed on the Blog page will automate your updates.
Website The LMC now has a Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Newcastle-North-Tyneside-LMC/252898648158228
We hope that most of the LMC’s communication will be by way of our website and that practices will use the LMC RSS Feed for automatic notification of new information.
See http://www.nntlmc.co.uk and try it out
George Rae Chief Executive Officer
David Black Executive Officer
Ken Megson Executive Officer
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