Menu Home Search

Weekly Update Friday 27th March 2015

Date sent: Friday 27 March 2015

Pneumoccocal Back Payments we sent a confidential letter to each Senior Partner and practice manager yesterday (26th March),  please look out for this is in the post as we do need a response as soon as possible

Clinical Hazardous Waste - Registration with the Environment Agency Practices will have been contacted requesting that they register with the Environment agency, in the past this had been done for the county by the PCT, unfortunately any costs of registration fall to the practice and it will now fall to individual practices to register

However, it is worth noting that if you produce less than 500Kg of clinical waste a year you do not have to be registered, and if you look at the EA guidance:https://www.gov.uk/how-to-classify-different-types-of-waste/healthcare-and-related-wastes you will see that quite a lot of what practices tend to put in yellow bags is not actually clinical waste. It may be that some smaller practices will be generating less than 10Kg a week if the waste was carefully sorted for disposal.

LMC and SGPET Websites Both new websites are now live and we hope you are finding them useful.  When registering onto the site it can take up to 24 Hours for a confirmation e mail to arrive to confirm registration and this has to be confirmed to enable bookings to be made on the site, so please bear this in mind if you are not already registered and wish to book onto an event.

Work force Minimum Dataset The GPC has been active in dialogue with the Department of Health (DH), HSCIC and the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) to address some of the concerns about the submission of the Workforce Minimum Data Set (WMDS), particularly around workload and information governance. Practices have been asked to supply data on their staff, including recruitment, vacancies, absences and personal details, such as date of birth, National Insurance (NI) number and gender. While they have not been able to resolve all the concerns they have negotiated extended deadlines while talks are ongoing and have asked that this is resourced please see

Consultation on Community and Primary Care Workforce Development Practice managers will by now have received a 16 page paper and questionnaire from Health Education South  West  asking for practice views on  an educational package for non-medical  primary and community care workers that HESW have already procured from the Universities of Plymouth and the West of England.

The objective is “ to support the current community and primary care workforce to transform community and primary care services to deliver integrated, personalised care to individuals and populations whilst ensuring that the service continues to be delivered safely and with high quality and to  develop a future community and primary care workforce that can work in this newly transformed health and social care context”.  The consultation asks whether the education being procured is “ fit for purpose and meets the needs of   service commissioners and employers”

The package proposed  is  very  comprehensive, and should help train  the workforce to manage patients with multiple  complex conditions in the new world,  but it is demanding and  in the LMC view probably  better suited to staff in an integrated service rather than those working specifically in general practice.

The LMC will be responding formally on behalf or practices and we have asked the Practice Managers Group to consider it as well, but individual practices are also invited to submit their comments – the closing date is April 15th

Smoking Cessation Update Solutions 4 Health have confirmed that  www.smokefreelifesomerset.co.uk is now live, and  Electronic referrals can be made via www.smokefreelifesomerset.co.uk/referral  where you can also  express an interest in attending specific training sessions via the training calendar.  In response to practice feedback they have slightly modified the SLA -  the new version can be found here.

Downs and Dementia baseline screening programme Somerset Partnership Practice managers will have received correspondence from Somerset partnership requesting details of patients who are known to have Downs Syndrome, this information cannot be given without patient consent and this has been discussed with Partnership who have taken this back to the originator of the correspondence, practices therefore do not need to take any action for this request

Occupational Hep B Patients attending requesting hepatitis B immunisation for occupational reasons are a regular headache and a frequent cause for practices contacting the LMC for advice. It is important to realise that if someone requires protection because of the nature of their employment or suffers a needle stick injury at work it is the responsibility of the employer under Health & Safety legislation to provide or contract for this service. It is not part of GMS. However, we have also had reports of such patients being directed to Accident & Emergency departments by practices which is not appropriate unless the patient is an employee of the acute trust.  Unfortunately it appears that many employers who ought to know better are trying to evade their responsibility and off-load costs onto the NHS. Practices tempted to take the path of least resistance and provide the injections could conceivably find themselves at risk for not doing this properly according to guidelines. There is useful information available on the LMC website  to help explain this perennial problem and includes model letters that can be given to patients and employees.

CQC The CQC is introducing new registration application and registration variation forms for providers. The new forms have been developed to take account of the changes to regulations from 1 April, including the introduction of the fundamental standards.

This change will affect all health and social care providers, including those GP providers who use online services. Around two-thirds of GP providers currently use online services to apply to make changes to their registration.  

The new forms will be made available to users of online services between Friday 17 and Monday 20 April – and any draft forms will be deleted at this stage. More information is available CQC online Registrations

 The CQC has published a news article on its website, explaining the phased process by which they will begin accepting the new offline forms and stop accepting the old versions.

http://www.cqc.org.uk/content/new-registration-application-and-registration-variation-forms