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Weekly Update Friday 6th March 2015

Date sent: Friday 6 March 2015

Somerset LMC Unfunded Work survey The results of the survey have now been collated and analysed, and we have put together a document of the results and comments, plus a template that practices can use based on those suggested by the GPC - to send back inappropriate requests to the submitting organisation, whenever this is practical and not detrimental to the patient. You may choose to use the form to inform the organisation that the practice  has completed the task requested on this occasion,  but will not do so in the future. The Chairman’s letter, template and comments from the survey can be found on the LMC website here

The LMC and CCG have already started to negotiate on developing a new form of ES to address the funding of transferred work and we hope that this document will help  with that development

Sharing Health Check Data with ToHealth As the data controller for the primary care record of your registered patients, each practice needs to ensure that   information is shared with other parties in line with Information Governance requirements.

PRIMIS have written a CHART query set that extracts the relevant information for Health Check providers, who will be acting as data processors to generate invitation lists, the precise arrangements depending on any agreement that the practice may have signed with ToHealth to do some of this work.  ToHealth do not keep any on this data in the long term, and the CCG has noted that ToHealth have a satisfactory return on the Information Governance Toolkit for their data security arrangements for processing. The practice has to authorise and initiate each upload, and in the event of a patient query can ask for information to be checked.

ToHealth is planning to use a mailing specialist to actually send the invitations, but because the practice is still the data controller it is important to confirm that this subcontractor is also signed up to the IG toolkit and we are currently waiting for confirmation that this is the case.

For the same reason, invitations have to go out in the name of the practice and not ToHealth. The text of the letter has now been agreed.

Data is returned to the practice via the DTS system, and ToHealth has to be a designated “EMIS partner” for this to happen, in the same way as other providers send e-messaging to the practice.  CCG/SWCS will help to set this up for those practices signed up to ToHealth arrangements, and practices are asked to log this via the usual GP IT Service Desk route. Practices should be displaying a Fair Processing Notice (not just for Health Checks but more general info sharing and processing, there are a number of examples available on the internet.

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-data-protection/principle-1-fair-and-lawful/

Focus on the NEW IT Requirements of the GP contract in England

This sets out the requirements for:

GPC statement - Generic prescribing of Pregabalin  A generic version of pregabalin (Lyrica) is shortly to become available, but it only has a license for use in epilepsy and general anxiety disorder with the manufactures patent on use for pain control continuing. The manufacturers have indicated their intention to enforce their patent through the courts, and anyone supplying generic pregabalin for pain control might be open to litigation. While this primarily affects dispensing doctors, others might be troubled by pharmacists seeking to confirm the indications for generic prescriptions. We would therefore advise doctors to prescribe Lyrica by brand when used for its pain control indication for the time being. NHS England Guidance

Seniority Factors 2011/12 The Health and Social Care Information Centre has issued two reports this week.  The final seniority factors for 2011/12 for England and Wales have been published, with the figures of £92,034 for England and £84,199 for Wales. Also published is “GP Earnings by Deprivation Score England 2011-12 and 2012-13”. Both publications and their annexes can be found on the Technical Steering Committee page at http://www.hscic.gov.uk/workforce/gpfinance