Dear colleagues,
This is the first of our regular newsletter. We would like to introduce you to your Hillingdon Local Medical Committee and keep you updated with our work.
Our committee:
- Dr Venothan Suri (Co-Chair), Glendale Medical Centre
- Dr Sujata Chadha (Co-Chair), Hillingdon Confederation Same Day Access Hub
- Dr Mahendra Mashru (Vice Chair), King Edwards Medical Centre
- Dr Bushra Khawaja, The Medical Centre (Wood Lane)
- Dr Archna Mathur, Wallasey Medical Centre
- Dr Niraj Nanavati, Glendale Medical Centre
- Dr Khatanji Odedra, Carepoint Practice
- Dr Manish Patel, Carepoint Practice
- Dr Satesh Sehdev, The Pine Medical Centre
Appointed Practice Manager Observer is Wissam Darouiche (Oakland Medical Centre) & Practice Nurse Observer is Delia Stearnes.
What is the LMC and what do we do?
The Local Medical Committee (LMC) works on your behalf to represent the interest of all GPs in Hillingdon. We are here for partners, salaried GPs, locums and all practice staff. If you have a difficult work-related issue then our GP support team may be able to help – they can be contacted at [email protected].
What has Hillingdon LMC been working on recently?
Safe Working:
- Primary/Secondary Care Interface – Ensuring all Hospital departments are aware that the use of Rego is not mandated for Practices. We continue to push back on all the inappropriate workload dumping that is taking place. Please do share any examples that you have.
- Working with the Borough team for Protected Learning Time for Practices.
- Raising concerns to the Borough and NWL ICB regarding the inequity for Mental Health Provisions for Asylum Seekers.
Stabilisation:
- The LMC continues to work with the ICB regarding unfunded work, which includes administering Zoladex and Prostap. Your practice does not have to accept new patients, please see the different template letters which can be used to reject these back to the relevant consultant. Here are the Zoladex template letter and Prostap template letter.
- Providing feedback and reviewing specifications for the new services as part of the Single Offer Enhanced Services.
- Pushing back on the Same Day Access Proposals for 24/25, current discussions are ongoing about encouraging a quality improvement approach for 24/25 to inform thinking for 25/26.
Hospital requests for non-contractual tasks
Londonwide LMCs has created template letters to help practices push back on un-resourced work transfer from secondary care to general practice. This template letter explains that due to extreme workload pressures and demand, practices have no capacity for non-contractual tasks which sit outside of the ‘core’ GP contract, such as following up investigations, taking on inappropriate prescribing and tasks like post-operative checks. We recommend that it is uploaded to your clinical system so that copies can be sent to Trusts and patients as appropriate. More information can be found here and a copy of the template letter here.
General Practice Alert State (GPAS) – Anonymised GP led pressures reporting
Londonwide LMCs and other LMCs nationally are rolling out the GP alert system (GPAS). We began this in 2022 and to date GPAS is now operating in 16 of our London Boroughs, with the remaining will be going live between July and September this year. GPAS will help to inform the rest of the NHS on the pressures faced by general practice and will change the narrative, so that pressure in general practice is considered a system problem rather than an individual practice’s failings.
It is important that we demonstrate this to the rest of the NHS system and if we don’t do this ourselves, the ICBs will implement their own data gathering process. We have this short window of opportunity to implement a system for ourselves, led by the LMC and to do this effectively we need practices to sign up.
As part of this we have now updated our guidance on GPAS levels giving clear ratios of FTE GPs to registered patients and of available GPs to patient appointments provided. The guidance also now details what measures practices can take when they reach an escalated GPAS level, such as amber or red, to mitigate some of the pressures on them. GPAS is based on three variables: workload, workforce and clinical administration. All three need to be considered when assessing your rating as green, amber, red or black. You can read more on this here.
Easy sign-up
Your sector teams here at Londonwide will support you and the process to do this is very simple. Submit your practices details here to sign-up. Following this, all you will need is one person within the practice to fill in a form of six questions every week taking only 3 minutes of practice time to give the rich data we need to be able to put forward our case.
Speaking up for general practice
At present, all practices are struggling to meet demand and due to this, workload is becoming unmanageable and unsafe. Practices often feel powerless to do anything to control this for fear of being in breach of contract. The BMA (British Medical Association) has produced its guidance on, Safe Working in General Practice and we encourage you to read this.
Remember GPAS is a system set up by general practice for general practice. The data is anonymous and is collected by your trusted partner Londonwide LMCs to enable us to show our pressures against the OPEL system used by hospital trusts and ambulance services.
Be part of the opportunity to control our own narrative. The more practices engaged with this the more powerful the data becomes.
BMA non-statutory ballot of GP contract holders is open now: “Are you prepared to undertake one or more examples of collective action as outlined in the BMA campaign to Protect Your Patients, Protect Your Practice?”
The GP BMA online ballot opened on 17 June, and closes on Friday 29 July. Please please please participate! To ensure you have a say you must be a GP contractor/ partner member of the BMA. Non-members can join now for 3-months free membership.
Alongside the ballot will be information about a menu of actions which will not breach GP contracts, but which collectively, will have a significant impact on ‘the system’. The time to act is now! More information can be found here.
Resources available
- Patient information videos
- GP and Practice staff training
- Advertise practice vacancies for free
- Safety First – Safety Resource Pack
- Londonwide LMCs Training events
Get in touch!
All constituents can raise any issues of concern with the LMC at any time. It would be great to hear from constituents on any feedback or issue you may have from operational concerns with NWL Enhanced Services Single Offer. Please feel free to contact [email protected].
Thank you for those of you who contact Hillingdon LMC committee members about issues as they arise. We rely on you to know where support is needed and are grateful for your queries. Please do reach out to LMC members or Amy. We are keen to hear from our local GPs and practice teams about any issues you are facing. We are here to represent your views.
Yours faithfully,
Dr Sujata Chadha, Co-Chair – Hillingdon LMC
Dr Venothan Suri, Co-Chair – Hillingdon LMC
Londonwide LMCs’ NWL LMC Team
Amy Honor, Committee Liaison Executive – [email protected]
Dr Asiya Yunus, LMC Secretary/Medical Director – contactable via Amy Honor
Jamie Wright, Director of Primary Care – contactable via Amy Honor
Lesley Williams, Assistant Director of Primary Care – contactable via Amy Honor