The NHS Confederation Looked at This Issue a Few Years Ago, Concludingthere

The Rise ofCommunity Services

Ever since the NHS was created it has been dominated by two services - hospitalsandGPcare.Butifthehealthserviceistothrivenowandinthe future that will have to change. There will need to be a third pillar - communityservices.

The problem with the current system is that patients in need of community services often do not get the help they need or don’t get it early enough. The result being that they end up in hospital more ill than they would have been had theybeenlookedafterintheirownhome. With the right treatment, many of these patientsdonotneedtobeinhospital.

The NHS Confederation looked at this issue a few years ago, concludingthere neededtobearadicalrethink.

Jo Webber, director of policy at the Confederation,explained:"Fortoolong, thedefaultsettingwhenwethinkabout healthcare or support is to think of a hospital.

These new models need to support healthy lifestyles, enable people to play more active roles in managing their own conditions, restore health and independence when conditions worsen, andrespondbettertopeople’sneedsand wishestowardstheendoflife.

+44 (0)1295 236910

"Butinreality,acutehospitalsarerarely the best place for someone who needs ongoinghealthortreatment."

As highlighted in NHS England’s Five Year Forward View, the next few years will be about developing models of care that are well suited to our population, which includes increasing millions of peoplewith (usually multiple) long-termconditions.

Alloftheseplaytothekeystrengthsof community healthservices:

person-centred,coordinated,increasingly complex care delivered by a range of professionals in, and near to, people’s homes.

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A note from theEditor...

WelcometoourfourthissueofPractice Post, the newsletter from CFH Docmail dedicated to GP practice managersand staff.

May we take this opportunity to wishyou all a very happy, successful and prosperous2016!

Thank you for your fantastic feedback on Practice Post, we are pleased you find it useful,wewouldliketomakeitevenbetter this year so we welcome your thoughts and suggestions.

Telluswhatyouthinkbyemailing .

In this edition we congratulate Glennis Lowdon from Earls Barton Medical Centre on winning our Practice StarAward.

Wewouldalsoliketointroducetwoofour

TheGood,theBadandtheUgly fromthelatestCQCinspections

The latest round of CQC inspection results has been released andoveralltheperformanceofGPpracticeshasbeenpositive, with85practicesoutofthe109inspectedratedgood.

businesspartners,LexacomandOptimum Patient Care, hoping to share increased efficiencieswithinyourpractice.

We also have a useful article fromJames Dillon from Practice Index to guide you through your CQCinspections.

Have you joined the Practice index community - visit find out what everyone is talking about.

Anyway,Ihopeyouenjoythisedition,let meknowyourthoughtsandsuggestions onwhatelseyouwouldliketosee.

Speaksoon,

VictoriaCoates

Client Services Manager, CFH DocmailLtd

In this issue of Practice Post James Dillon, Managing Director of Practice Index, talksus throughtheresultsfromtheinspections.

TheGood

Inspectors praised outstanding practices for thefollowing:

•Offeringawiderangeofextendedopening times, including early mornings, early evenings and Saturday mornings

•Health care assistants working as key membersofthepracticeteamandspeaking arangeoflanguages

•Having a good skill mix including nurse clinicians and nurse practitioners who are abletoseeabroaderrangeofpatientsthan the practicenurses

•Healthchecksfor40-75yearolds

•Longer appointments for peoplewith learningdisabilities.

TheBad

Negative findings and suggested improvements noted by inspectorsincluded:

•Staffnotclearaboutreportingincidents, near misses and concerns

•Limited formal governance arrangements and confusion regarding roles and responsibilities

•Lackofcommunicationbetweenclinicaland non-clinicalstaff

•Governance arrangements not including audits to monitor staff training, infection control,andkeepingthebusinesscontinuity planupdated

•Practices not deploying sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled and experiencedstafftoeffectivelysupportand meet the needs of patients, including all clinical and administrativetasks.

TheUgly

Someofthemostconcerningfindings included:

•Patients at risk of harm because systems and processes were not in place to keep themsafe

•Insufficientclinicalstafftokeeppatients safeandinadequateclinicalleadership.

Thankstothedetailedreportsprovidedbythe CQC, inspections provide practices with a handy guide to what’s needed and what to avoid when seeking to achieve a good or outstandingrating.Headto readthroughallreports.

Whatinitiativeshasyourpracticebeenpraised forininspections?Leteveryoneknoweitherby commenting in the Practice Index Forum - practiceindex.co.uk/gp/forum

TakingyourPPGtothenextlevel

Practice Index has recently launched myPPG, an online discussion forum where Practice Managers and GPs can connect with a diverse range of their patients to discuss surgery matters.

The first online patient forum of its kind, myPPG works in a very similar way to the popular Practice Index forum. myPPG is a ‘sounding board’ for ideas and helps identify newservicestomeetpatients’needs,through posts, easy to run polls andquestionnaires.

To have your own private PPG forum, involve patients from the wider population and demographic, plus gain input from thosewho cannot attend meetings, go to: practiceindex.co.uk/gp/myppg

Lexacom integrates Docmail’sservices

Lexacomistheonlyproviderofadvanceddigitaldictationsoftwareandworkflow solutionsthatcanofferthemostflexiblerangeoffullyintegratedservices.

OPCandDocmail: Delivering better PatientOutcomes

ThenumberonechoiceforHealthcareproviders

and designed specifically with the medical user in mind, our all-encompassing software, Lexacom3,istheidealsolutionfororganisations including CCGs, Federations, NHS Trusts, GP Practices and specialist providers. Lexacom 3 can be configured specifically for any organisationalstructure’srequirementsinorder tolightenyourworkload,improveaccuracyand enhanceefficiencyinyourworkplace.

Lexacom 3 provides a complete end to end workflowsolutionfullyintegratingwitharange ofthirdpartyservicesanduserscanalsoenjoy continuousaccessandflexibilitywithLexacom Mobile.

Lexacomistheonlysolutiontooffer:

•Fullintegrationacrossallthreemajorclinical systemstoensurepatientsafetyandaccurate patientreferrals

•TheabilitytointegratewithOutsourced Transcription and Speech Recognition servicestomaximiseefficiency

•Dictationatyourdeskoronthemovewith Lexacom Mobile for the iPhone, iPad or Android phones and tablets, enabling dictation on the move and compatibility acrossallmajordevices

•Workasteamacrossbranchesormultiple sitesusingsecurecloudtechnology

•Compatibilitywithallleadingdictation hardware

•Onsiteengineerstoworkwithyoutoensurea

hasslefreeinstallationandsmoothtransition toyournewsoftware

•Provideongoingsupportpostinstallationvia email,phoneorthroughoursupportpageson thewebsite

•Detailedreportingandreal-timedashboardto monitor referrals andworkload

•Automatic updates with the latestinnovations, delivereddirectlytoyourdesktop

Lexacom 3 integrates with Docmail’s ‘print to post’services,whichcompletestheendtoend workflowsoyoucandictate,transcribe,printand post documents, all through your Lexacom software.

To find out more about Lexacom and how it works with Docmail, contact a member of our by telephone01295236910.

Optimum Patient Care (OPC) is a socialenterprisewhichwassetupto help GPs manage their patients with chronicdiseases,inparticularAsthma andCOPD.

We do this by providing a free Clinical Review Service to practices across the UK. This consists of individual patient reports, summarising the relevant medical data and providing‘considerations’forthepatientforuse during consultation. These feed into our PracticeReportswhichtakeanaggregatedview of the population, characterising them on various variables and showing areas of concern/interest the practice may have. In conjunctionwiththeseservices,wealsoprovide ournursestoconductasthmareviewclinicson behalfofthepracticetohelpreachQoFtargets, and a questionnaire service to help contact thosehardtoreachpatients.Theseareoffered on a cost sharingbasis.

Ourquestionnairesaresentoutonbehalfofthe practicethroughDocmail,anexcellentservice that allows us to keep Patient Identifiable Data (PID) confidential. We have separate questionnaires for Adult Asthma, COPD and Child Asthma which collect information on control, exacerbations, smoking status, rhinitis, therapy (including side effects) and other general information. After processing, we can pass this information back to the practice helping to fill in the blanks on some of the patientsitishardtogetintoclinics.Ontopof this, it has been shown that these questionnaires can be a useful intervention in thepatientscare,helpingthemtoconsiderthe stateoftheconditionandhowitmaybemade better, sometimes even leading to patients wantingtobookaconsultation.

Coupled with our Clinical Review Service, we alsosupportpracticesinconductingresearchto help improve care for everyone. We offer a patient identification process, mailings (again viaDocmail)andotherpatientcommunication, nurse led clinics and logistical support. Being abletotakealistofpatientsgeneratedbyour proprietary software and mail them securely using a reliable service is critical to us being abletooperateourservice,anditwouldnotbe possiblewithoutDocmail.

For more information on our services please visit, .

ThelatestonVanguardSites

InJuly2015eightnew‘vanguard’sitesforurgentandemergencycarewere announced.

Theseeightsiteswill,likeothervanguards, benefit from a programme of support and investmentfromthegovernment’s

£200million transformation fund and are intended to transform urgent and emergency care for more than nine million people and link GP out-of-hours care with local urgent and emergency care services. They will change the way in which all organisations worktogethertoprovidecareinamorejoined upwayforpatients.

GPs will play an important part in the new vanguard sites. Under the plans, urgent care willbedeliverednotjustinhospitals,butalso by GPs, pharmacists, community teams, ambulance services, NHS 111, social care and others, and through patients being given support and education to manage their own conditions.

NHS England’s Chief Executive Simon Stevens,said:“TheNHSwillbeginjoiningup

theoftenconfusingarrayofA&E,GP out-of-hours,minorinjuriesclinics,

ambulance services and 111 so that patients know where they can get urgent help easily andeffectively,7daysaweek.

“That’s why we’re backing our frontline nurses,doctorsandotherstaff,inpartnership with local communities, to radically redesign oururgentandemergencyservices.”

As reported in a recent issue of HSJ magazine,theDirectorofNHSEngland’snew care models programme, Samantha Jones, said the “fundamental principle” of the vanguards across all care settings is to “get on and do it” to find out which models work. The new care model leadership team will regularly publish updates on how successful the new approaches being tested have been. Ms. Jones said this would show “the components that make things work for patients and population, as opposed to talking about the theory behind it”. She added that as a former acute trust chief executive she found the vanguard approach “really exciting because it’s saying let’s go and do it, and show whether it works and works at scale to fundamentally change the waywedeliverurgentandemergencycare.”

What are your thoughts on the vanguard sites?IsyourGPpracticeinvolved?Ifso emailandtellusat

Docmail prescribes theideal print and postsolution

Forthe last two years,Martin’sOak Surgery,a small practicein the East Sussex town of Battle, has been using Docmail to handle its mass mailings to patients. Not only has this saved the practice countless staff hours, but hasalsocuttheirstationeryandpostagebilldramatically.

Practice Manager at Martin’s Oak, Carey Sinclair, recalls: “We started using Docmail a coupleofyearsagotohelpreducetheburden of doing large mailings, and almost instantly we could see itsappeal.

“Docmail has saved money, staff hours and elbow grease and once we learned how to format the documents and spreadsheets it really was plain sailing. Furthermore, the helpdesk are invaluable - they are very responsive, understanding, and have some greathintsandtips.”

Careyadds:“SofarIwouldestimatewehave saved days in staff hours and therefore hundredsofpoundsusingDocmailforlarge printruns-it’smuchmoreefficientthanthe moretraditionalmethod.

“WearegladtohavediscoveredDocmail- andwebelievethatothermedicalpractices should benefit from it too - in fact, I have alreadyrecommendedittoourlocalCCG Cluster and Practice ManagerForum.”

iscreatedandmaintainedbyCFHDocmailLtdforthebenefitofDocmailcustomersinthePrimaryCaresector.

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