Welcome to this week's primary care bulletin

Key points this week include:

• NW London ICB exceeds national target for physical health checks for people with serious illness (SMI)
• GP screens
• ERS changes
• TPP SystmOne practices SMS improvement 
• Burnout group (Keeping Well NW London)
• Training, webinars and more

NW London ICB exceeds national target for physical health checks for people with serious mental illness (SMI)

NW London’s GPs have ensured that 80% of people registered with SMI received all six health checks in 2023/24 exceeding the national standard (22,468 people against a target of 20,865). This is a year on year improvement and an increase from 67.1% against a target of 60% in 2022/23. 

This could not have been achieved without the hard work and dedication of our primary care colleagues and voluntary sector providers providing outreach support. The efforts made support the ICS in tackling health inequalities for a vulnerable group of people who are at risk of dying 15-20 years earlier than the general population, largely due to preventable or treatable physical health problems. 

Targeted outreach funding for the voluntary and community sector in each borough has supported this work giving access to peer support for service users and ensure that checks result in support to make healthy lifestyle improvements. This additional support will continue into 2024/25 and it will be important for GPs to continue to support these partner organisations in this work. 

GP screens

NHS NW London is no longer funding patient facing GP screens in surgery waiting areas. This includes those operated by Numed’s Envisage Coda. GP practices can choose to self-fund but some practices are choosing not to.

Practices who are not funding the screens should expect them to stop functioning once their individual licence expiry date has been reached.

Please bear this in mind if you are considering adding any information to GPs screens. To discuss this further, please speak to the Communications team - nhsnwl.communications.nwl@nhs.net 

ERS changes

FAO: Those that deal with urgent suspected cancer referrals

In March 2024, there was an update to e-RS to enable Referral Assessment Services to be shortlisted. This change has left us with some patients that may not have been booked an appointment or have had their appointment sent for Triage. 

We have been informed by the NHS England’s e-RS national team that all practices should be monitoring their e-RS worklists on a daily basis and in particular these urgent suspected cancer services (2WW) referrals, which have not yet had an appointment booked by either the patient themselves or by the practice on behalf of the patient. 

Please see the attached support manual for more information and how to deal with this issue.


ERS Changes Workshops

The team will be running some sessions to explain the new process. 

Wednesday 24 April 2024 at 11:00 – Join the meeting now 

Thursday 25 April 2024 at 13:00 - Join the meeting now 

Two week wait changes to urgent suspected cancer (USC)

The name of the address entries for two week waits (2WW) will be changing imminently to urgent suspected cancer in both SystmOne and EMIS. This is inline with national guidance. 

Should you have any problems with the above, please log a call with the Service Desk via one of the following routes below and one of the team will call you back.

🖥️ Self Service Portal

⌨️ nhsnwl.servicedesk@nhs.net 

📞 020 3350 4050 

TPP SystmOne practices - SMS improvement 

Following the notification from TPP last week about the new functionality to send longer SMS messages, the IT team ask that you do not adjust your SMS message length settings at this point in time.

Current ICB settings with the SMS provider means that if you increase your SMS length settings in ‘Organisational Preferences’, then longer messages will not be fully received by patients.

'Communications Annexe' does not currently show how many SMS fragments are used when sending a longer message. This may lead to unexpected SMS costs for practices if this contributes to them exceeding their ICB funded SMS allowance.

The IT team have requested TPP to add to the ‘Communications Annexe’ to show how many SMS fragments are being used when sending all messages. If this improvement arrives, then IT will revisit whether we can increase the SMS length and will notify you accordingly.

In addition, TPP will soon be rolling out the ability to send SMS messages with longer message content accessed via a URL link. Whilst this could help reduce practices’ potential SMS fragment costs. The IT team want to highlight the risk of a lower read-rate by patients as they have to click a link or may not have a smart phone.

Burnout group – Keeping Well NW London 

Is work stress affecting your mental health and leading to you feeling burnt out? 

Keeping Well North West London will be facilitating the Burnout Group which will be running for 6 consecutive weeks, starting on Friday 7 June, 11.30am – 1pm.

The sessions will incorporate Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) protocols as a means of promoting positive wellbeing using psychological techniques, reflective exercises and group discussions.    

Spaces are limited for these sessions and staff members can use the self-referral form and select the option to "join a Burnout group for stress." Please note that this is a closed group and attendees are encouraged to attend every session.

Medicines optimisation webinar

Click here to watch the recent medicines optimisation webinar which took place on 4 April 2024.

Polypharmacy: Prescribing safely in older people lunchtime masterclass

13 May 2024, 12pm to 1.30pm

Join the webinar to find out why we need to be more careful about prescribing for older people, understand more about the drug metabolism in older people and some of the common safety issues.

Dr Lauren Walker Senior Clinical Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics and Internal Medicine, University of Liverpool is a Guest Speaker. The session will include therapeutics, evidence base summary and patient case study for discussion and learning, followed by a Q&A session.

Book now.

Polypharmacy: Stopping antidepressants safely lunchtime masterclass

21 May 2024, 12pm to 2pm

Join Dr Mark Horowitz, author of The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines, Clinical Research Fellow and Training Psychiatrist on stopping antidepressants safely and managing withdrawal symptoms, an essential masterclass for clinicians who prescribe these medicines.

The session will include a summary of the evidence base and patient case study for discussion and learning, followed by a Q&A session.

Book now

NIHR ARC NWL Spring collaborative learning event 

Building capacity for integration engaging local workforces  

Date: Thursday 9th May 2024
Times: 10am – 4pm
Venue: St Paul’s Centre, Queen Caroline Street, Hammersmith, London, W6 9PJ 

The event will explore the development of integrated care from the perspective of the workforce. 

Nigel Edwards, Health and healthcare policy expert, will present a keynote talk titled: “Lessons from integration: implications for building local teams.” 

This event has as been approved by the Federation of the Royal Colleges of Physicians of the United Kingdom for 3 category 1 (external) CPD credit(s). Activity Code: 148176

 Click here to register your attendance.