Page last updated: 31 March, 2021, 11:55am
Primary Care E-bulletin (Issue 130) – 30 March 2021
Welcome to the latest edition of our e-briefing to support GP practices across mid and south Essex.
If you think these e-briefings could be improved, please let us know how by sharing your feedback.
Previous bulletins can be found on the MSE healthcare professional website.
There is also a search function (located top-right of the website) to make it easy to find what you’re looking for.
In this Issue:
- COVID-19 vaccinations and young carers
- COVID-19 2nd dose vaccinations – video for social media/practice websites
- Maximising vaccine uptake in underserved communities
- Guide to local health services during the Easter 2021 Bank Holiday
- Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust: Digital Transformation Programme
- Safeguarding patients using remote consultations
- Improving Support for People with Learning Difficulties Experiencing Domestic Abuse
- Important Deadline Reminder: National Workforce Reporting System deadline
- Pinnacle reporting update
- Gynaecological Cancer Webinar
- The dermatology digital playbook – how teledermatology can help deliver service improvement and transformation
- We have now entered the pre-election (Purdah) period
Primary care communications during the Easter period
Due to the upcoming Easter Bank Holiday Weekend, there will be some changes to the dates we publish the primary care briefings.
This week we will be publishing a further update on Thursday (1 April) instead of Friday. Following this, next week we will only be publishing one bulletin which is planned for Wednesday (7 April).
Temporary changes to the way we deliver primary care e-briefings
There will be some temporary changes in the way we deliver this bulletin to you from today (Tuesday 30 March, 2021). This is due to the fact that we will be changing provider for our email communications.
From today, we will be sharing the primary care bulletin with you via our healthcare professional website. Following this (date TBC), we will be using a new email provider, which means that the design and layout may change slightly, however, there won’t be any significant changes to content.
We are therefore asking primary care colleagues to please share views about what you’d like to see in future briefings and what you liked about our previous communications. Please find out how you can feedback below.
Help shape future primary care bulletins
Deadline: 12 April 2021
We’d like to take the opportunity to review our current newsletters, so we are asking people to share their views on the content and layout of newsletters received up until recently.
We do appreciate there are many demands on your time at present, but if you can spare a few moments to complete a brief feedback survey we’d be very grateful.
We will use this feedback to help build our new design for primary care communications going forward.
Support with Day to Day Issues
COVID-19 vaccinations and young carers
In line with the JCVI, carers – including young carers are eligible for COVID-19 vaccination. In the main, 16-18-year olds will need to have Pfizer. This can be administered in primary care sites or through the hospital group. Carers are being advised to contact their GP practice who will then understand whether they can be seen in the local primary care site or will refer them to the MSE hospital service.
To refer to this service, please complete the MSEFT COVID-19 Vaccination Referral Form online here and select ‘Cohort 6 16 or 17 year old requiring Pfizer vaccine’ for Question 5 – Reason for Referral. The hospital will then contact them to arrange their vaccination.
As far as is possible, please refer before Thursday 18th March as the Trust is planning on providing this clinic on the 21st-23rd March alongside existing second dose appointments where there is currently some vaccine available.
Please direct any questions about the service to: [email protected] in the first instance.
COVID-19 2nd dose vaccinations – video for social media/practice websites
The CCG communications team have worked with local GP Dr Chana, to develop a video explaining the importance of going back to the same place for the 2nd vaccination and a reminder to call ahead if plans change and you are no longer able to attend.
Maximising vaccine uptake in underserved communities
Please download the below practical guidance for implementing a range of interventions to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccination and drive uptake in underserved communities.
Guide to local health services during the Easter 2021 Bank Holiday
The CCGs have developed guides to health services in mid and south Essex over the Easter 2021 Bank Holiday Weekend (including pharmacy opening details). The CCGs will be promoting the information via social media. Please feel free to share the guides as appropriate via your own networks too. The posters which can be downloaded below include QR codes that take people to the online page where information relevant to their area can be found.
Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust: Digital Transformation Programme
On Wednesday 31 March, the digital services at Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust will be carrying out extensive work in creating a new data centre linking together the networks across the three sites (Basildon, Southend and Broomfield) hospitals.
The work is due to take place between 04:00 – 08:00 hrs, and will involve the downtime will affect the inbound and outbound traffic of a number of clinical and non-clinical systems across the three sites. It is envisaged that the amalgamation of network services will take place between 04:00 – 07:00, with the testing of services taking place the last hour.
Business continuity plans will be initiated to ensure critical services can be maintained and continue to be delivered, however EPRR officers will be on duty to provide a link and support to any services that may be impacted by the downtime.
Safeguarding patients using remote consultations
Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust has strengthened its safeguarding message for patients who use the remote consultation system, AttendAnywhere. This message includes information and phone numbers that patients can contact if they are unable to raise their concerns during a remote consultation. All patients will see this message before entering their virtual consultations.
The use of remote consultations will form a key part of the return of the Trust’s outpatients and non-urgent services, and so it is important that support is provided to patients using virtual platforms. This will make sure that any safeguarding issues are raised and not missed when patients are not attending a hospital in person, and patients are protected when attending consultations online.
For more information, please visit the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust website here or contact [email protected]
Improving Support for People with Learning Difficulties Experiencing Domestic Abuse
Another area has produced a useful toolkit to support people with learning disabilities experiencing domestic abuse. The toolkit features accessible information to help people with a learning disability identify and escape domestic abuse.
Click here to access the toolkit.
Important Deadline Reminder: National Workforce Reporting System deadline
The National Workforce Reporting System, commonly known as NWRS, is run by NHS Digital to collect, monitor and present primary care workforce data across England. Practices and PCNs must record information on their workforce. Extractions are taken by NHS Digital on a quarterly basis.
It is important that all Practices and PCNs provide an updated position as accurate capture of this data is a key requirement of a number of funding sources including the Covid Capacity Expansion Fund. NHS England routinely monitor the CCGs on this, and non-completion of this may affect funding available to our area in the future. Please ensure your practice and PCN is reporting their workforce via this platform. The next extraction data is 31st March 2021.
If you have any difficulty accessing the platform, or would like further support, please contact [email protected].
Pinnacle reporting update
Pinnacle has released new reporting functionality to enable the reconciliation of COVID vaccinations data.
There is a process to complete to get access to the patient identifiable reports.
Please download the below documents for more information.
Education and Training
Gynaecological Cancer Webinar
To help meet the requirements of the Primary Care Network DES on engaging with local system partners, the Macmillan GPs have arranged for a second Cancer education sessions, this time focusing on the Gynae Cancer Pathway. MSE Secondary Care Consultant Gynaecologist, Dr Nima Rai, will deliver a short presentation and hold a question and answer session for those that attend.
The WEBINAR will be on Thursday 29 April 2021, 12-1pm, via teams and will be open to all Clinical Directors and Cancer Champions. Please forward this invite on to any colleagues who would be interested to join the webinar.
Sign up HERE (bit.ly/gynaecancerevent) to register for this FREE event. Details on how to join the webinar will be sent separately once you have registered.
Best wishes,
Dr Liz Towers (Macmillan GP Mid Essex)
Dr Deepak Kumar (Macmillan GP Basildon and Brentwood)
Dr Mark Metcalfe (Macmillan GP Castle Point and Rochford)
Dr Andrea Oustayiannis (Macmillan GP Thurrock)
The dermatology digital playbook – how teledermatology can help deliver service improvement and transformation
Tuesday 13 April, 5pm – 6.15pm,
Join speakers from NHSX and the British Association of Dermatologists (BAD) in a webinar looking at how teledermatology can help enable new models of care. Hear directly from clinical experts as they share some of the impressive work that is already underway to implement teledermatology nationally.
Click here to register and join
Mid and South Essex Training Hub
For the latest initiatives from the Mid and South Essex Health and Care Partnership Training Hub, please visit the Training Hub section of our website.
For Information
We have now entered the pre-election (Purdah) period
For your information, we wanted to let you know that we have now entered the pre-election period for the local council elections and police, fire and crime commissioner elections covering mid and south Essex. This means things can get lively politically – the important thing is that the NHS (including PCNs) remain politically neutral.
There shouldn’t be many implications for primary care – our advice would be to notify us of any approaches from local councillors/MPs and avoid taking part in any media interviews at this time.
The pre-election period (previously referred to as Purdah) is the period of time immediately before elections or referendums when specific restrictions are placed on the use of public resources and the communication activities of public bodies, civil servants and local government officials.
The pre-election period is designed to avoid the actions of public bodies distracting from or having influence on election campaigns.
As well as our local authority colleagues, the pre-election period has implications for all NHS organisations too. See below key considerations.
For more information visit: https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/pre-election-guidance-for-nhs-organisations/
NHS Primary Care COVID-19 Bulletin
Click here to access NHS England’s latest primary care COVID-19 bulletins.
For the latest advice and guidance around coronavirus for clinicians, please visit the NHS England website.