Somerset LMC Weekly Update Friday 22nd April 2016
Date sent: Friday 22 April 2016
All Somerset GPs and Practice Managers This and previous updates can be found here
- General Practice Forward View
- Thyroxine (infertility patients)
- Sessional GPs e newsletter April
- Shingles PGD (now available)
- DEC Certificates
- BMA Event: End of life care 25th May Bristol
- Hypertension Survey
- Vaccine Update 244 - Special Edition BCG Supply, April 2016
- An Opportunity to become a GP Appraiser, NHS England South, Southwest - link to further information
General Practice Forward View NHS England have published their “General Practice Forward View”, setting out the support package for Primary Care over the next five years. The details can be found here, together with a letter from the GPC. The headline figure of a £2.4 billion extra investment in Primary Care taking the share of healthcare budget up to 10.4% is welcome, though taken from the £8 billion extra investment already announced (and allocated) for the wider NHS. The headlines include increased resources, reduced bureaucracy and regulatory burden, widening the workforce and improved infrastructure and technology. Whether this will alter the situation quickly enough for practices struggling with workload and recruitment problems right now remains to be seen.
Thyroxine The LMC office was recently contacted by a practice who had been asked to prescribe levothyroxine to a patient attending an infertility clinic in Exeter. The patient was clinically and biochemically euthyroid, but the recommendation from the clinic was that there was benefit in supplementation to suppress the TSH level below 1.0. The practice declined to prescribe on the basis that this was outside their sphere of experience, as well as being off-licence, and they felt prescribing and monitoring should be undertaken by the commissioned specialist service. The matter was raised with the CCG, who were unable to find NICE guidance or any other evidence basis specifically for this recommendation. Whilst GPs are of course free to prescribe off-license, the LMC supports the position that GPs are free to decline to prescribe in circumstances such as these.
DEC Certificates could we remind practices that for buildings under 1000 SQ M, which the majority are in Somerset the DEC certificates issued are valid for 10 years, there is no need to sign up to a yearly contract for this regulation. further info
Organisation of care in Hypertension 2016 - - invitation to take a brief survey From Tash Mejzner, Chris Clark, Lindsay Smith, John Campbell
If you have already responded to our survey there is no need to read further. If you haven’t yet done so please consider helping us. Responses to date have shown some interesting trends in hypertension care over time, and identified useful areas where future educational activity can be offered to practices.
We would be very grateful if one member of your practice, perhaps whoever leads in hypertension, could undertake to complete the survey for us. It takes no more than ten minutes to complete.
We will circulate a summary of our survey findings to you when the project is complete, and there is the opportunity within the survey to express interest, without commitment, in future hypertension research projects.
The survey can be found here: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/hypertension_2016
If you have any queries please feel free to contact me (c.e.clark@exeter.ac.uk) or Tash Mejzner, research assistant: n.mejzner@exeter.ac.uk
Kind Regards
Jill
Jill Hellens
Executive Director
Somerset LMC
TEL: 01823 331428
Fax:01823 338561
www.somersetlmc.co.uk
