Somerset LMC Weekly Update Friday 20th May 2016
Date sent: Friday 20 May 2016
All Somerset GPs and Practice Managers This and Previous updates can be found here
- NHS Standard Contract with the CCG for Enhanced Services
- GPC "Focus on the NHS England General Practice Forward View"
- Indemnity Arrangements for Student Nurses
NHS Standard Contract with the CCG for Enhanced Services Practice managers will know that we are starting the second year of a three year ES contract with the CCG that is based on the national NHS Standard Contract. This is a long and unwieldy document that is really not suited for use by small providers like practices, and NHS England has recently issued a short form version that is more suitable. However, for the duration of the existing contract we are stuck with the long version.
Following the recent contract enquiry letter from the CCG practices should start to receive their revised contract documentation for this year. The changes are primarily in dating and some terminology, and the LMC believes that there is no substantial change that should alarm practices.
There are a couple of reporting requirements about which national guidance or local agreement is awaited and the CCG has very helpfully added a “relevance to GPs” column in key sections so it is much clearer what is expected of practices. Please do not hesitate to contact the LMC office if you have any concerns or questions
GPC “Focus on General Practice Forward View” The GPC has produced this useful analysis of the actions proposed in the recent, GPFV document from NHS England,and how these relate to the GPC’s own paper “Responsive, safe & sustainable: our urgent prescription for general practice”. Although substantial extra investment in general practice is promised in the GPFV, the “Practice Resilience Programme” appears to be the only funding likely to be available in the immediate future, with a framework for the use of this to be produced by next month. Although the £16M allocation for the current year sounds substantial, it actually equates to something like £2200 per practice if evenly spread. The full list of proposals for 2016-17 are on pages 13 &14. Page 15 identifies three recommended tasks for LMCs, and all of these are already in hand in Somerset.
Indemnity Arrangements for Student Nurses The LMC encourages practices to consider having student nurses on attachment during their training. Not only does this give them experience in primary care which improves long term recruitment, it also brings in to the practices enthusiastic nurses in training who can make a useful clinical contribution.
As a rule it is the responsibility of the training/employing organisation to ensure that students have any necessary insurance cover. Some practices have therefore been concerned to hear from their own indemnity providers that student nurses are consequently not personally covered under the practice's policy with its MDO. However, students of any kind should never be undertaking any procedure unsupervised so any risk of harm to a patient should be minimal: indeed, one MDO wrote to a practice to say that they had not been able to identify any claims ever against practices arising from the attachment of a student nurse. Practice staff can normally approach their MDO for assistance in the event of any claim against them arising out of their supervision of a student nurse and generally MDOs do not need to be specifically notified about training attachments, though we would recommend that practices do check their cover.
Kind Regards
Jill
Jill Hellens
Executive Director
Somerset LMC
TEL: 01823 331428
Fax:01823 338561
www.somersetlmc.co.uk
