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The rapid spread of coronavirus has given the NHS a “kick forward” in the need to accelerate technology and ensure staff are digitally prepared, a GP has said. Neil Paul, a Digital Health columnist and GP in Ashfields, said the need to reduce face-to-face appointments to prevent the potential transmission of Covid-19 has forced the NHS, particularly in primary care, to adopt already available technologies. He said practices “still in the stone ages” and “technophobes” were less prepared for the current situation, but that it would force them to move into the digital age. “It’s absolutely made my surgery go ‘right, how do we do online consults’. I think it actually has given people a real kick forward,” he told Digital Health News. “I think in six months’ time my surgery might be very different in that actually we will be doing a lot of online and telephone consults where previously we may have been a bit reluctant." GP practices across the country have been advised to assess patients online or via telephone and video appointments to mitigate the potential spread of coronavirus. In a letter to GPs last week, NHS England urged Britain’s 7,000 GP surgeries to reduce face-to-face appoints for patients displaying symptoms of Covid-19. The preemptive move means millions of patients will now be triaged online, via telephone or video and contacted via text messaging services. Read full story Source: Digital Health News, 13 March 2020

Regional NHS leaders in England have been ordered to immediately organise a primary care management service to care for covid-19 patients who “do not require immediate admission” to hospital. In a letter sent on 8 March, seen by The BMJ, NHS England and NHS Improvement’s strategic incident director for coronavirus, Keith Willett, has ordered regional primary care and public health directors to set up a 24 hour, seven day a week service to manage patients in the community. This service should be delivered by an out-of-hours provider, and every part of England must be covered by Tuesday 10 March, the letter said. The service will be used to manage patients who are deemed well enough to be isolated at home, with active monitoring for people who are at high risk of developing severe illness, and advice to those not deemed high risk on what to do if their illness deteriorates. The letter advises that patients “remain in isolation until 5 days after resolution of symptoms, unless [they are a] healthcare worker or work with high risk groups, in which case require one negative sample 5 days after resolution of symptoms before return to work.” People with mild illness and not in a high risk group will be told to isolate themselves at home and will be given health advice on how to identify deterioration. All patients managed at home will be given a phone number to call if they feel more unwell. The letter said that the community service should be provided by a nurse and GP team and that all clinical information should be recorded and transferred to the patient’s general practice. Providers must also provide regular situation reports, including confirmed numbers of patients cared for under the service, numbers of patients who deteriorate, and numbers of patients admitted to and discharged from the service. Read full story Source: BMJ, 9 March 2020

A key element in the new covid-19 response service run by NHS 111 urgently needs more doctors, NHS England has said. The national covid-19 clinical assessment service, or CCAS, serves a cohort of patients with coronavirus symptoms deemed by 111 as needing a clinical assessment over the phone or online. An email to GPs from NHSE’s primary care directors on Friday evening said: “We urgently need more GPs help to staff this service, especially as covid-19 cases increase over coming days, because of your expertise and experience.” Read full story Source: HSJ, 6 April 2020