Somerset LMC Weekly Update Friday 21st July 2023
Date sent: Friday 21 July 2023
Sent to all Somerset GPs and Practice Managers This and previous updates are available here
- MD Soundbites!
- Somerset GP provider Board Update
- All Salaried Practice Staff Pay Uplift
- Pharmacist in Training
- PC-SC Collaboration Forum
- Career Plus
- Safer Somerset Partnership (Violence Reduction Unit)
- Thrombophilia Screening
- Cameron Fund Summer Newsletter
- Safe Working in General Practice (BMA)
- Job Vacancies
- and Finally...
Somerset GP Provider Board Update- Dr Berge Balian Chairman
1.We are developing a “Board Assurance Framework” that will drive the SGPPB’s work in the future. We would welcome comments on this. sphadmin@nhs.net
2. The LMC has developed a comprehensive practice resilience support proposal on behalf of the SGPPB. This will incorporate and expand on the resilience support historically provided to practices by the LMC, the ICB, Symphony, 100Fold and others. We are in discussion with the ICB in finalising this and securing the long term funding of this program.
3.We are developing a General Practice data set for Somerset that will be held by the LMC and owned by practices. This will be used to support practices beginning to experience difficulties, in addition to demonstrating our activity and value to the Somerset Health & Social Care System. This will be presented and discussed at the LMC study day in September.
4. We are working with the ICB to agree the first steps in supporting the implementation of the Primary Care Strategy. The first set of priorities we have identified include the resilience program and data hub. Facilitating practices to close for half a day per month to have some “thinking time” and in order to promote resilience and innovation, and expanding the menopause service to develop a comprehensive “women’s health” service available across the county to support practices with this area of activity.
5. We are hoping to create a working group tasked “operationalising” the Primary Care Strategy. Any clinicians or managers interested in being involved in this group should inform the LMC (via the LMC office) or ICB (via Michael Bainbridge)
All Salaried Practice Staff Pay Uplift- GPC are in consultation with NHSE to confirm their intention to increase salaried General Practice funding. The award is intended to cover ALL salaried practice staff not just salaried GPs and will be backdated to April 2023. The total value of the award for salaried practice staff in 2023/24 is 6% as recommended by the DDRB . GP contractors will be excluded as they are subject to a five-year investment agreement ending in 2024, which was agreed with the BMA in 2019. We will provide a further update as soon as we hear confirmation.
Would your practice or PCN be able to support a pharmacist in training? The LMC have been approached by a pharmacy student (just completed year 2) who would like to spend time over the summer in primary care, with a view to ultimately working within general practice as a pharmacist. Any duration of experience would be welcome. Enabling enjoyable, short-term placements such as this could help support longer term workforce development for your organisation, and Somerset as a whole. For further details please contact LMC.office@nhs.net
PC-SC Collaboration Forum The next one of these meetings will be on Tuesday 25th July 1-2pm and here is the Teams link Click here to join the meeting . Tom MacConnell will be coming to talk about Cinapsis, the new advice and guidance software and we can also let you know how the dermatology transformation project is coming along, so please come and join the discussion, raise an issue or just listen in. We won’t hold a meeting in August but will be back in September, when we will be following up the meeting with a podcast (!). It would be great to share some of the fantastic projects that are happening in primary care and in networks, so if you would like to come and talk about what you are doing, please do let me know (andrea.trill@somersetft.nhs.uk ). I think many of our colleagues in secondary care will be really interested to hear all the innovative projects that are happening. Look forward to seeing you there, Andrea
Career Plus is recruiting participants for our upcoming GP Career Plus and Nurse Career Plus courses. Participants can be any GP or GP nurse who is not part of the new to practice fellowship scheme and is at least 5 years into working in general practice. Each course is 10 sessions long, usually taking place on alternate weeks. Sessions are remunerated for attendance, which can be claimed by practices as backfill, or individuals if self-employed. The groups are face-to-face at Monk’s Yard, Hortons Cross. Courses are facilitated by experienced facilitators. Up to 10 participants attend per group. Nurse Career Plus is a pilot course, following on from Somerset’s successful GP Career Plus, of which this will be the 11th cohort. A recent promotional video for GP Career Plus can be found here. GP Career Plus is due to start on the morning of Tuesday 14th November, while Nurse Career Plus is due to start Wednesday 4th October. For further information please click on the following links for GP Career Plus and Nurse Career Plus
And Finally
Thank you for your responses to the recent LMC survey on managing bariatric patients abroad. We really appreciate the time and effort it takes to complete the survey and we hope that these results will help highlight our concerns with our ICB.
Kind regards
Jill
Jill Hellens
Executive Director
Somerset LMC
Crown Medical Centre, Venture Way, Taunton, TA2 8QY
Tel: (01823) 331 428
Fax: (01823) 338 561
www.somersetlmc.co.uk
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