Mentors wanted
The Supporting Mentors Scheme is aimed at experienced GPs who wish to develop mentorship skills, we would like your support to make GPs working in your GP practice aware of this offer. The scheme offers GPs the opportunity to access mentoring training, connect to mentees and reimbursement for mentors for their mentorship sessions.
Mentors on the scheme are linked with GP Fellows as clients. Clients can then access one hour of mentoring per month for the length of their Fellowship in South Yorkshire. This can be up to 24 months of support.
National funds mean we are in a position to recruit mentors to support the growing number of South Yorkshire GPs who would like to connected to a mentor.
GP Mentor Training Dates
- 2 day training course – Wed 8th March 23 and Wed 22nd March 23
- GPs can also register expressions of interest for future dates
Criteria: GPs who have experience in leadership roles, medical education, or have experience of being a GP partner are particularly encouraged to participate. To be eligible to participate in the scheme, the prospective GP mentor must:
- Be an experienced GP, either a partner or in a salaried post, working in general practice who holds full registration and a licence to practise with the General Medical Council (GMC) and still working at least three clinical sessions a week.
- Meet the requirements for remaining on the NHS England GP Performers List and report to NHS England any concerns that might affect their status on the National Medical Performers List and
- Not be subject to interim suspension under section 41A of the Medical Act 1983
- Commit to deliver one session of mentoring every week
What do participants receive?
a) mentorship training and support
b) a financial payment of £289 for the weekly session utilised for delivery of mentorship activities
For more information, an application form and to book training, please contact GP-S at contact@gp-s.org
Directly bookable GP appointments
This guidance sets out requirements for online appointment booking following changes to General Medical Services (GMS), Personal Medical Services (PMS) and Alternative Provider Medical Services (APMS) contractual arrangements that came into effect in England from October 2022 and originally described in the 2022/23 GP contract letter.
The previous contractual requirement stated that “all practices will ensure at least 25% of appointments are available for online booking”. This requirement – that applied to the entirety of the practice’s appointments – has been replaced by a requirement that practices instead make all of their “directly bookable” appointments available online, as well as by phone or in-person.
Under the amended legislation, practices are able to decide which of their appointments should be made available for direct booking having had due regard to this guidance.
GP practice waiting times
Data showing detailed appointment waiting times is now being published. The statistics, which cover all GP practices across England, is being made available to inform patients how many appointments each practice is delivering and on the length of time taken from booking an appointment to the appointment itself. However, GPC have raised with NHS Digital/NHSE that this data is insufficient to draw any conclusions about what is being offered by individual practices. In particular the reality that significant numbers of patients are seen by experienced clinicians that are not GPs, all of whom are aggregated in the data. NHS Digital/NHSE informed GPC that there would be caveats in the data making this explicit.
In terms of public access to this information a usable dashboard is planned for April, although the raw data in tabular form is now publicly available. The BMA is ready to challenge any misreporting of this data in the media.
To be clear there is no minimum number of appointments practices must provide as the manner in which practices deliver care is up to them. However there is existing guidance on safe working in General Practice and the BMA has also published guidance on workload control in General Practice.
Improving your practice website
Guidance on creating highly usable and accessible GP websites for patients is available. This will help practices to increase overall patient satisfaction, reduce enquiries to reception staff, reduce digital inequalities and ensure practice websites are compliant with accessibility regulations.
Creating a highly useable website
GMS and PMS requirement to pass on DDRB recommended uplifts
Practices with a GMS contract, or with a post-2015 PMS contract, have a contractual requirement to “ only offer employment to a general medical practitioner on terms which are no less favourable than those contained in the document entitled “Model terms and conditions of service for a salaried general practitioner employed by a GMS practice” published by the British Medical Association “.
The Model Terms states under clause 6 “Your salary will be increased by annual increments on [incremental date] each year and in accordance with the Government’s decision on the pay of general practitioners following the recommendation of the Doctors’ and Dentists’ Review Body”
Practices who have salaried GP employed under the terms of the model contract should offer the DDRB recommended 4.5% pay uplift as a minimum.
GPCE has lobbied for global sum to be uplifted to accommodate this increase for salaried GPs and other practice staff and will continue to do so.
Read the BMA’s statement about the DDRB
Updated BMA webpages regarding travel with medications and vaccinations
Following recent correspondence with airlines regarding their requests for medical information to be provided by GPs, the BMA have updated guidance on their webpages. There is also advice for GPs on the regulations for travel immunisations – some must always be given with no fee, some cannot, and some can be given as either an NHS or private service. Further information can be found here
GP mythbuster 87: Freedom to Speak Up
Freedom to Speak Up is about encouraging a positive culture where people feel they can speak up, their voices will be heard, and their concerns and suggestions acted on with no retribution.
Speaking up can be about anything that affects care for patients or the working life for colleagues. It includes:
- learning lessons from complaints and when things have gone wrong
- feeling able to speak up to prevent potential harm
- being able to make suggestions as an opportunity to improve.
Speaking up can improve the quality of care for people and can benefit colleagues in the workplace. It is a professional obligation for some members of staff including doctors, nurses and allied health professionals.
It is vital to listen well when someone speaks up. All staff should feel safe and comfortable to raise concerns and be assured that their concerns will be considered and acted on appropriately. Listening well enables staff to do this.
Most speaking up happens through conversations with supervisors and line managers where challenges are raised and resolved quickly.
There are 5 elements to managing the Freedom to Speak Up process:
- recognising something is wrong
- speaking up
- thanking the person who raises the concern
- undertaking the necessary actions to remedy
- providing support to the member of staff throughout the process.
The Freedom to speak up policy for the NHS focuses on the importance of arrangements for inclusive and consistent speaking up and driving learning through listening.
There are some unique challenges to speaking up in primary care. Some staff can feel particularly isolated because they work in smaller practices or they fear a risk to their employment if they are raising concerns about someone who may be their direct employer.
There are different models to support primary care organisations in developing their speaking up arrangements in general practice. These include providing Freedom to Speak Up:
- within an organisation, such as a GP practice, GP federation or primary care network
- within local medical committees or at an integrated care system-wide level.
Doncaster LMC – Freedom to speak up – https://www.doncasterlmc.co.uk/freedom-to-speak-up
Register with a GP surgery service – a message from NHSD
Feedback from the 2020/21 GP Bureaucracy Review identified GP registration as a high volume and difficult task for practices and patients. The NHSD Register with a GP surgery service will provide all practices in England with an online option for their patients, helping reduce the administrative burden for general practice as well as making GP registration more accessible to the public.A growing number of practices are now using the online service on an opt-in basis and thousands of successful registrations have taken place. NHSD are using practice and patient feedback to enhance the service further and fine tune additional features To find out more, visit the NHS Digital website here.
Prescriptions for reimbursement
Following upgrades to the payment platform, the historical ‘work-around’ enabling pooled lists is no longer available, and drug reimbursement claims should be submitted using the GP prescriber number.
From April 2023 the correct GP Prescriber number must be used when submitting prescriptions for reimbursement.
If your practice has previously used a pooled list code to claim drug reimbursement, there may be some discrepancy in payments. Where an outstanding payment is causing your practice difficulty, NHS England advise that you should make your local commissioner aware as it may be possible to provide a potential advance payment, until the matter is resolved.
To understand what claims have been submitted and are outstanding, please contact nhsbsa.gpsupport@nhs.net where one of the team will be able to provide further clarity.
Transitionary Arrangements until the 31st March 2023
As a transitionary measure to avoid further payment delays, any drug reimbursement claims incorrectly submitted from October 2022 using a pooled list code will be amended by the NHS BSA and allocated to the Senior GP Partner prescriber number. The NHS BSA will contact the affected practices and provide support to ensure future claims are submitted using a GP prescriber number.
The transitionary process will be in place until the 31 March 2023. From 1 April 2023 please ensure that all claims are submitted using a GP prescriber number.
If you have questions regarding this letter, including what claims have been submitted and are outstanding, please contact NHSE by emailing nhsbsa.gpsupport@nhs.net.
Patient Registrations - foreign addresses
When registering patients whose previous address was outside of the country, GP practices do not need to provide this information. If entering an address is mandated then ADDRESS UNKNOWN can be used in the previous address field.If an existing NHS number is traced on Spine and the previous address is populated automatically but contains over 50 characters you may see an error on the clinical system. To overcome this, you can edit the foreign address, or replace with ADDRESS UNKNOWN whilst retaining the patient’s place of birth. You will then be able to submit the registration via the GP links in the normal way.You can find further helpful tips and support, including guidance on Confusions and Gender Reassignment on the Registrations section on the PCSE website here.