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Showing results for tags 'Primary care'.
Found 194 results
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Content ArticleThe number of people on NHS Wales waiting lists for treatment has reached record levels. This problem has worsened since the Covid-19 pandemic, with the average wait time for treatment more than doubling since December 2019. This report by the Welsh Centre for Public Policy identifies five key areas in which policy could be developed to improve outcomes and reduce waiting times. These areas target the underlying factors causing increased waiting times, and are likely to both improve the overall performance of the health system, and to impact outcomes which matter to patients, resulting in a more patient-centred approach: Workforce capacity Digital technology Reimagining primary care Systems collaboration Follow-up care
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EventuntilThis winter The Patients Association is bringing patients, carers and healthcare professionals together to talk about patient partnership. Join the following speakers to hear some great examples of regional working: Helen Hassell to talk about work the Patients Association is doing with Notts ICS on the MSK pathway Dr Debbie Freake, GP and member of the National Centre for Rural Health and Care Heather Aylward, and Lauren Oldershaw, from NHS Hertfordshire and West Essex Integrated Care Board, on their work with 155 GP practices' patient participation groups, which the Patients Association is supporting Register for this event
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Content ArticleThis Health and Social Care Select Committee report examines the pressure currently facing general practice, which is leading to low morale, GPs leaving the profession and problems recruiting new GPs. In turn, patients are increasingly dissatisfied with the level of access they receive. The root cause of the situation is that there are not enough GPs to meet the ever-increasing demands on the service, coupled with patients presenting with increasing complexity due to an ageing population. The report outlines the Committee's assessment of the key issues, including the problems with reliance on locum doctors and lack of continuity of care, and outlines what the Government should do to equip general practice for the future.
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Content ArticlePatient safety in ambulatory care settings is receiving increased attention. Based on interviews and focus groups with patients, providers, and staff at ten patient-centered medical homes, this qualitative study explored perceived facilitators and barriers to improving safety in ambulatory care. Participants identified several safety issues, including communication failures and challenges with medication reconciliation, and noted the importance of health information systems and dedicated resources to advance patient safety. Patients also emphasised the importance of engagement in developing safety solutions.
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Content Article
This is part of our series of Patient Safety Spotlight interviews, where we talk to people working for patient safety about their role and what motivates them. Sarah and Jaydee are working on an innovative project at NHS Dorset Integrated Care Board (ICB) to ensure general practice is a central part of improving patient safety across services. They talk about the value and challenges of collaborative working, how they are tailoring their offer to fit the needs of local GP practices, and making patient safety a core part of training for all healthcare professionals. -
Content ArticleAcute prescribing forms a large part of the daily workload for GP practices. Quality improvement (QI) methodology can be used to help improve prescribing processes and ensure that prescribing work is managed by the right member of your team, safely and effectively. This toolkit is designed to help primary care multidisciplinary teams, including pharmacotherapy services, safely improve their acute prescribing processes in line with the Essentials of Safe Care. An acute prescription is defined as any prescription without a serial or repeat mandate.
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Content ArticleThis practice pointer in The BMJ provides an update on treating Long Covid in primary care and outlines how healthcare professionals might respond to questions that patients ask about the condition. The article provides information on: Definition of Long Covid Epidemiology Symptoms and case definition Questions patients ask Further resources for patients and healthcare professionals
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Content ArticleMost of the contact that people have with the NHS is with general practice: there are an estimated 300 million appointments each year. These services provide the first step in diagnosing and treating most patients’ health conditions. Due to changes in the data, trends in general practice staff are limited to 2015 at the earliest. The data do not include staff working in prisons, army bases, educational establishments, specialist care centres including drug rehabilitation centres and walk-in centres. From July 2019, primary care networks (PCNs) will offer services to patients and employ new specialist staff such as clinical pharmacists, social prescribing link workers, physiotherapists, physician associates and paramedics. NHS Digital has started to publish information on the PCN workforce, but the data does not presently cover all PCNs. Based on the PCN data that is available, the Nuffield Trust has estimated the number of certain primary care staff groups employed by PCNs across England,.
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Content ArticleThe UK health system is under unprecedented strain. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated these pressures, but it did not create them. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and its member organisations believe that as a country we are not facing up to the scale of the current challenges and we are not producing any coherent strategy to tackle the problems. Only when we confront these challenges will we be able to begin to fix the NHS. A combination of pressures means that the system is providing care and services which are sub-standard, threaten patient safety and fall below what should be expected in a country with the resources of the United Kingdom. If we do not act with urgency, we risk permanently normalising the unacceptable standards we now witness daily, to the detriment of us all.
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Content ArticleIn this blog, Jeremy Hunt MP, Founder of Patient Safety Watch, outlines six priorities for the new Health Secretary, Therese Coffey MP. He argues that these patient safety priorities will help reduce elective and emergency pressures and save money.
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Content ArticleEach year, up to 100 million people in the US experience acute or chronic pain, mainly because of short-term illnesses, injury and medical procedures. It is therefore important that patients are offered effective treatment options to reduce symptoms and improve function. Nonopioid management is the preferred option, but there are circumstances for which short-term opioid therapy is appropriate and beneficial. Finding the balance between these approaches is an ongoing problem in the management of acute noncancer pain. This cluster randomised clinical trial featured in JAMA Health Forum, aimed to assess whether clinician-targeted interventions prevent unsafe opioid prescribing in ambulatory patients with acute noncancer pain. The authors found that the use of comparison emails decreased the proportion of patients with acute pain who had never taken opioids receiving an opioid prescription. The emails also reduced the number of patients who progressed to treatment with long-term opioid therapy or were exposed to concurrent opioid and benzodiazepine therapy. They concluded that healthcare systems could add clinician-targeted nudges to other initiatives as an efficient, scalable approach to further decrease potentially unsafe opioid prescribing.
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Content ArticleThis guideline from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) covers assessment, management and preventing recurrence for children, young people and adults who have self-harmed. It includes those with a mental health problem, neurodevelopmental disorder or learning disability and applies to all sectors that work with people who have self-harmed.
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Content ArticleThis article describes perceptions of the culture of safety in paediatric primary care in the US, and evaluates whether organisational factors and staff roles are associated with these perceptions. The authors found that perceptions of the culture of safety and quality in paediatric primary care practices were generally positive, but differences in perceptions did exist based on staff role.
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Content ArticleThis editorial in BMJ Quality & Safety looks at the need for urgent improvement in the test result management and communication process in primary care. The authors highlight the inconsistency in tracking and communicating test results and look at potential solutions to reduce the patient safety risks associated with test results. They look at the evidence surrounding automated alerts built into provider IT systems and giving patient direct access to test results through apps, highlighting the growing importance of patients in safeguarding their own care through actively pursuing test results.
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News Article
LMC creates letter for GPs to reject hospital workload dumping ‘tsunami’
Patient-Safety-Learning posted a news article in News
An LMC has created template letters to help practices reject secondary care workload dumping, including rejected referrals and requests to complete work on behalf of hospital trusts. Cambridge LMC said it developed the tools amid a growing ‘tsunami’ of secondary care workload transfer into general practices. One template letter tackles the rejection of a referral ‘on the basis that a proforma was not enclosed or completed in full’. It points out that the GMC requires GPs to refer when they ‘believe it is necessary to do so’ and that their ‘contractual obligations make no mention of a requirement to complete a proforma’. Cambridgeshire LMC chief executive Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer told Pulse that ‘we need the temperature to rise on the understanding around pressures across general practice’. Read full story For more information on the issues raised, read a blog by Patient Safety Learning about the patient safety risks of rejected outpatient referrals. Source: Pulse (19 August 2022) -
Content ArticleLouise Greenwood is joined by: Sarah Kay, GP Clinical Lead for Patient Safety at NHS Dorset Jaydee Swarbrick, Patient Safety Specialist at NHS Dorset to discuss the importance of patient safety at this time of significant pressure across the NHS. Patient safety is about maximising the things that go right and minimising the things that go wrong. It is integral to the NHS’ definition of quality in healthcare, alongside effectiveness and patient experience.
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Content ArticleThese Quality Standards have been developed by the Resuscitation Council UK. They enable healthcare organisations provide a high-quality resuscitation service, with guidance tailored for different settings including acute care, primary care, dental care, mental health units, community hospitals and in the community.
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Content ArticleAs dentists hand back their NHS contracts in record numbers, GPs are seeing the impact on their workload and patients’ health, especially in “dental deserts,” reports Sally Howard in this BMJ article. Over one week this spring, 20 patients presented at GP Abbie Brooks’ York surgery with abscesses, dental pain, and broken teeth—demanding antibiotics and painkillers. Brooks could not prescribe because she was not indemnified to perform dental work. Many of these patients, Brooks says, were not registered with a dentist or able to find an NHS dentist, and had already been told to call 111. The NHS medical helpline had advised patients to visit emergency NHS dentists 50 miles away from Brooks’ surgery. “Vulnerable patients often can’t get to emergency dentist appointments in Bradford or Leeds for logistical or financial reasons,” she says, adding that a small proportion of patients became difficult when Brooks was unable to help. “One woman was really quite angry that I wouldn’t incise and drain her abscess,” she says. “It’s not acceptable for GPs to have to deal with this crisis not of our doing.”
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Content ArticleThe health and care system in the UK is under intense pressure and as a result, patient and public satisfaction with services has dropped significantly, prompting debate and discussion about the future of health and care services. In this article, Charlotte Wickens, Policy Adviser at The King's Fund, looks at five 'myths' perpetuated about the NHS by politicians and the media. She analyses the extent to which each myth can be backed up or debunked by the available data and evidence. The myths she analyses are: The NHS is a bottomless pit, demanding more and more money The NHS is inefficient GPs aren't working hard enough to meet demand for appointments The government has 'fixed' social care The NHS is being privatised
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News Article
What the Fuller Stocktake report means for primary care and digital technology
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The recent publication of the Fuller Stocktake report sets out a new vision for the role of primary care in integrated care systems. With primary care the bedrock of the NHS and at “the heart of communities”, the paper’s recommendation to similarly establish it at the centre of new ICS systems and foster greater collaboration is a welcome one that has been greeted positively in many quarters. However, a key priority underpinning many of the recommendations made is the need to create sustainable primary care for the future. Within this, there is a challenge to tackle “inadequate access to urgent care” which the report argues is having a direct impact on general practice’s ability to provide continuity of care to patients who need it most as well as overall primary care capacity. Referred to as being two sides of the same coin, this stark recognition of current workload and workforce challenges in general practice alongside their wider contributing factors is both timely and welcome. Read full story (paywalled) Source: HSJ, 27 July 2022 -
Content ArticleThe House of Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee has published a report highlighting the current health and social care workforce crisis in England. The 'Workforce: recruitment, training and retention' report, which calls for a robust workforce strategy, states that within the NHS in England there’s a shortage of over 50,000 nurses and midwives, while in April this year hospital waiting lists reached an all-time high of almost 6.5 million.
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News Article
NHS in England facing worst staffing crisis in history, MPs warn
Patient Safety Learning posted a news article in News
The large number of unfilled NHS job vacancies is posing a serious risk to patient safety, a report by MPs says. It found England is now short of 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives, calling this the worst workforce crisis in NHS history. It said a reluctance to decisively plug the staffing gap could threaten plans to tackle the Covid treatment backlog. The government said the workforce is growing and NHS England is drawing up long-term plans to recruit more staff. Former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who chairs the Commons health and social care select committee that produced the report, said tackling the shortage must be a "top priority" for the new prime minister when they take over in September. "Persistent understaffing in the NHS poses a serious risk to staff and patient safety, a situation compounded by the absence of a long-term plan by the government to tackle it," he said. It said conditions were "regrettably worse" in social care, with 95% of care providers struggling to hire staff and 75% finding it difficult to retain existing workers. "Without the creation of meaningful professional development structures, and better contracts with improved pay and training, social care will remain a career of limited attraction, even when it is desperately needed," the report said. Read full story Source: BBC News, 25 July 2022 -
EventJoin this Royal Society of Medicine conference to learn some of the key medico-legal issues that impact upon GPs/primary care. The overarching aim is to improve patient safety in both primary and secondary care via learning from incidents and better understanding the indemnity provisions in place for GPs/primary care and how that feeds back into learning. The aim of this meeting is to review and promote an understanding of recent legal and regulatory developments, with a specific emphasis on inquests, clinical negligence and incidents in the primary care sector, and their impact upon patient safety. Additionally, we will also discuss issues that those in secondary care should also be aware of. Register
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Content ArticleTimely written communication between primary and secondary healthcare providers is paramount to ensure effective patient care. In 2020, there was a technical issue between two interconnected electronic patient record (EPR) systems that were used by a large hospital trust and the local community partners. The trust provides healthcare to a diverse multiethnic inner-city population across three inner-city London boroughs from two extremely busy acute district general hospitals. Consequently, over a four-month period, 58,521 outpatient clinic letters were not electronically sent to general practitioners following clinic appointments. This issue affected 27.9% of the total number of outpatient clinic letters sent during this period and 42,251 individual patients. This paper from Patel et al. describes the structure, methodological process, and outcomes of the review process established to examine the harm that may have resulted due to the delay.
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Content ArticleIn this briefing paper for the Social Market Foundation, Lord Norman Warner sets out a radical change programme that could reverse the decline in NHS services. It examines long-term issues that have been exacerbated by the impact of Brexit and the Covid-19 pandemic—the care backlog, workforce issues and loss of public confidence.
