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In This Bulletin:
- General Practice Webinars
- PPE
- Safeguarding in Virtual Consultations in Primary Care
- ‘Help Us, Help You’ campaign
- New to Partnership Payment Scheme (N2PP)=
A) General Practice Webinars
Due to the increasing amount of information that is being sent out to Primary Care, as we are looking to enter a second wave of the pandemic, these webinars will now take place fortnightly with the next one on Thursday 15 October at 5pm.
You must register in advance to be able to attend.
B) PPE
Primary care has never needed certain items of medical grade PPE before, but the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is now providing emergency PPE supplies to 58,000 different settings, including primary care providers such as GPs.
The DHSC PPE strategy reflects the ongoing changes and increased PPE usage that have been required to keep patients and staff safe, especially since face to face consultations have started to increase in primary care, therefore PPE will be provided to meet the requirements of all health and social care providers in England to support their COVID-19 needs.
As we prepare for a second wave of COVID-19, alongside the usual winter pressures, the DHSC have stated that a four-month stockpile of each of the six PPE categories will be in place from November 2020 which includes:
- Films (aprons, body bags and clinical waste bags)
- Eye protection (goggles and visors, reusable and single use)
- Face masks (IIR, FFP3, FFP2 and PAPR respirator)
- Gloves
- Gowns (reusable and single use)
- Chemicals (hand hygiene, general purpose detergent)
Please ensure you have registered and order through the online PPE Portal. Here is the current list of GPs order limits.
C) Safeguarding in Virtual Consultations in Primary Care
A recent document, reviewed and endorsed by the National Network of Named GPs for Safeguarding (NNNGP), has been developed to give advice to all GPs about the consideration of Safeguarding in all virtual consultations, including both phone and video calls.
This link has also been added to the Further Reading section in the QCS Online Consultations Policy and Procedure and the Video Consultations Policy and Procedure.
D) ‘Help Us, Help You’ Campaign
We know that many patients still mistakenly believe GP services are closed, so NHSE launched a new phase of the ‘Help Us, Help You’ campaign on 9 October 2020 to encourage the public to contact their GP if they are worried about a symptom that could be cancer. A toolkit with supporting resources, including promotional materials are available on the Public Health England Campaign Resource Centre.
E) New to Partnership Payment Scheme (N2PP)
The N2PP scheme, to grow the number of partners (and individuals with equivalent status) working in primary care, has raised a number of questions about the evidence required to support applications. Therefore NHSE have updated their guidance to reflect the documents that are required.