Category Archives: News

Two years of Covid-19 vaccinations in general practice

News

It’s two years to the day since the first Covid-19 vaccination was administered by a Primary Care Network (PCN) in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG).

In that time, general practice staff and volunteers united across BNSSG to deliver over 1.4 million Covid-19 vaccinations at PCN clinics, which is around 54% of all vaccinations delivered in BNSSG.

Reflecting on the last two years, Dr Geeta Iyer, Clinical Lead for Mass Vaccinations, said: “Since the beginning of the vaccination programme, our practices and PCNs have worked incredibly hard to deliver this huge number of vaccinations alongside core services. This has made a massive difference to people in BNSSG and has undoubtedly reduced pressures on our healthcare system.”

“PCNs and practices should be very proud of the work they have done and continue to do, working with their communities and the wider system to ensure patients can access essential services like vaccinations.”

Over the two years, more than 5,000 staff and volunteers were involved in over 50 GP-run clinics, providing communities with first, second and booster jabs.

PCN vaccination clinics have been praised by the public, with a recent survey showing 95% of patients thought their experience at a PCN clinic was very good or good. When asked about their vaccination experience, one patient said it was: “…perfectly orchestrated. I could not be more impressed”.

Ruth Hughes, programme manager for PCN vaccinations, said “General practice has played a huge part in ensuring the success of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign, delivering over half the Covid-19 vaccinations in BNSSG. This emphasises the capability of general practice to meet their local population’s needs, but also the importance of involving general practice in future vaccination campaigns.

“I would like to thank all the staff and volunteers who worked together to run these GP clinics – without your hard work, this would not have been possible.”

It’s not too late to get vaccinated against Covid-19 – click here to find out more. Moving into the winter period, being vaccinated against flu and Covid-19 is the best way to protect yourself and those around you.

GPCB outpatients group seeks to improve primary and secondary interface

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The General Practice Collaborative Board (GPCB) was set up by all practices in BNSSG to represent the voice of general practice in system discussions and decision-making.

To ensure general practice is properly represented within Integrated Care System (ICS) programmes of work, the GPCB created its own infrastructure for general practice transformation programmes.

One of these programmes is outpatients. The GPCB set up a committee, bringing together GPs and practice managers from across BNSSG, to provide general practice input to the ICS outpatients programme. It is led by Dr Nicola McGuinness, clinical lead, and Ruth Hughes, programme manager, and works closely with the Avon LMC and the clinical lead for planned care at the Integrated Care Board.

The GPCB outpatients network is funded by the ICS, which allows general practice to be part of key discussions and decision-making in the same way as the acute trusts and Sirona. This is significant for general practice as it allows us both to influence the existing projects and raise our own at-scale issues at a system level to find solutions together.

This improves the relationships and interface between general practice and secondary care, which supports the new ways of working in an ICS: putting the patient in the centre and building support and services around them.

One of the successes of the group so far has been collecting feedback from staff in general practice about advice and guidance processes to bring into the system review of the service. This means the views of both primary and secondary care are brought into discussions about how to improve the service.

The network has also worked with the trusts and the Integrated Care Board to think about how data can be used to support understanding of waiting times for hospital appointments. Following these discussions, the trusts and the ICB are looking at how to ensure accurate, local data is available for clinicians referring into secondary care, and for patients who are waiting for their appointments. This is important to give patients a realistic expectation of wait times, and what they can do in the meantime to support their health.

Dr Nicola McGuinness, GP in North and West Bristol and clinical lead for this programme, said, “The GPCB outpatients network is key to ensuring general practice is represented in the wider ICS outpatients programme. Our successes so far show that involving general practice in system outpatients work ensures the patient experience at the community end of their care is represented.”

One Care launches new digital forum for BNSSG general practice 

News

The general practice digital forum for Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire held its first meeting on 8 November. 

Set up by One Care’s digital team, the forum is a place for practice digital leads to meet, discuss operational issues and challenges, share experiences, and take away lessons to apply to their own practice. 

Thirty-five people have already signed up to the group, and more than 20 attended the first meeting, with a mix of roles represented including practice managers, practice IT leads, GPs, PCN managers, and business managers. 

At the meeting, attendees discussed the various online consultation systems currently being used in BNSSG for patient triage and online messaging, and their pros and cons. BNSSG ICB also attended to provide an update on its current work and future plans in this area. 

Bex Tilling, One Care’s head of digital support, said: “The original suggestion for the forum came from a practice IT manager, and we’re delighted to have been able to help bring it about. The first meeting was a success – feedback has been great, and members are excited about the possibilities for the future. 

“We hope it’s going to be a valuable resource for digital leads in BNSSG, enabling them to pool their knowledge and experience. It will also help One Care to ensure our digital services deliver what practices need.” 

The forum will meet every two months, with a Microsoft Teams channel enabling discussion between meetings. 

If you would like to learn more about the forum, please visit the TeamNet page. If you’re interested in joining the forum, please email digital@onecare.org.uk.

One Care releases IIF tracking dashboard for primary care networks

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One Care’s businesses intelligence team have developed a new dashboard to help general practice in BNSSG monitor progress against national targets from the Investment and Impact Fund (IIF).

The IIF is an incentive scheme that rewards primary care networks (PCNs) for delivering high quality care to patients, improving population health and delivering priority objectives from the NHS Long Term Plan.

It measures PCNs’ performance against a set of targets relating to health inequalities, personalised, preventative and anticipatory care, medicines optimisation, and environmental sustainability.

The One Care dashboard has been developed to help PCN managers and clinical leads track how their PCN is performing against these targets, and what level of income they can expect to receive as a result.

The team is also developing a practice-level dashboard, enable visibility of how each practice in a PCN is contributing.

Rhys Lewis, Head of Digital at One Care, said: “The PCN DES (of which IIF is part) is an important source of funding for general practice. A typical PCN in England could earn around £100,000 , so it’s important our PCNs have an easy way to see how they’re doing, and identify where the most cost-effective action can be taken to maximise this income.

“Feedback so far has been really positive. PCNs can see its value and understand what it can do for them. We’re currently developing the next iteration, which will help PCNs see where they can expect to be tracking towards the end of the financial year, and how their resources are best focussed to deliver the maximum benefit for their patients and maximise income.”

If you would like to know more about the dashboard, or have any feedback, please email business.intelligence@onecare.org.uk

GPCB sets out principles for working in BNSSG healthcare system

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The General Practice Collaborative Board (GPCB) formed in 2020 to strengthen the voice of 24/7 general practice within Bristol, North Somerset, and South Gloucester (BNSSG).

The GPCB brings together all general practices within BNSSG, Avon Local Medical Committee and BrisDoc which provides the out-of-hours GP service. Hosted by One Care, the GP federation for BNSSG, the GPCB ensures the voice of general practice remains a ‘golden thread’ and is robustly represented within the new Integrated Care System (ICS).

The ICS was established on a statutory basis in July 2022, and brings together partners from health and social care, local authorities and the Integrated Care Board, which replaced the CCG in July 2022.

By bringing these partners together to work collaboratively, the ICS puts patients at the very heart of the system and builds services around their needs.

General practice is the bedrock for the health and care system, and deals with the majority of health interactions through multidisciplinary teams of GPs, nurse practitioners and other clinical and non-clinical staff members working within surgeries. GP surgeries care for patients from cradle to grave, and are uniquely placed to build trusting relationships with their patients.

General practice involvement is therefore essential to the success of an integrated care system. The GPCB has developed some key principles around how general practice works within the Integrated Care System in BNSSG. These will enable general practice to act as an equal partner in our system partnership, and will lead to proper general practice engagement in decision-making across healthcare in our area.

The principles the GPCB works to are:

  • The GPCB is the go-to place for the system to engage with general practice
  • General practice at-scale work should be funded by the system
  • General practice should be involved in all system programmes from the outset
  • Each programme requires programme management, as well as clinical and non-clinical input
  • General practice engagement in system work will be prioritised in line with GPCB priorities

By following these principles, we ensure the expertise and experience of general practice is involved in any design of pathways and services. The principles also ensure voices are heard from across all general practice, the right expertise is found, and any progress made is shared back across all 76 practices in the area. We are working closely with our ICS partners to embed these new ways of working across everything we do in our system.

Dr Katrina Boutin, GP in Inner City and East Bristol and the Vice-Chair of the GPCB, said “Agreeing the principles of general practice engagement with our partners is an important step in partnership working in the new Integrated Care System. This is so we can ensure all partners are working consistently and collaboratively together to support our local populations, improve services and reduce inequalities.

Currently the GPCB is working within the system on several programmes: digital strategy; mass vaccinations; outpatients and urgent care. These programmes are steered by committees comprising clinical and non-clinical general practice representatives with a specialist interest in that area, and led by a clinical lead and programme manager.

These programmes are supported by One Care business intelligence, communications and digital expertise to enable change management within practices.

Successes to date include: coordinating the successful general practice aspect of the Covid vaccination programme; working with secondary care on outpatients processes to support the patient journey; and developing an urgent care strategy that supports patients being seen in the right place at the right time.

 

One Care brings staff sharing to general practice in BNSSG

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The collaborative bank project has entered its next exciting phase, as the project looks for practices to begin staff sharing within their PCNs.

Facilitated by the Ryalto app, the collaborative bank enables practices to put out shift requests to local practice staff, and be quickly matched with colleagues who have the necessary skills and experience.

The aim is to increase the agility of the workforce across BNSSG, offering a way for practices to fill gaps in their workforce to meet their patients’ need.

The video below gives an overview of the project and the Ryalto app.

The app is currently being used in Network 4 and Healthwest to manage shifts for vaccination clinics to great success.

The project is supported by the GP Collaborative Board, and funded by BNSSG ICB.

Making One Care a greener organisation

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One Care is playing its part in the move towards net zero by taking steps to reduce its environmental impact.

One Care’s in-house green team looked at how the organisation uses resources including water, power and materials, and made recommendations on areas for improvement.

Some of the steps already in progress include reducing electricity usage by fitting energy-efficient LED lighting in the office; and automatically switching off power-hungry desktop computers at the end of the day, which can save up to 11 hours of electricity consumption.

One Care is also increasing the number of different waste types it recycles, making it easier for staff to recycle waste rather than throwing it away.

It has also eliminated the use of bottled water for meetings, instead providing carbon-zero water coolers and promoting the use of refillable drinking bottles.

One Care’s Green Team lead Harry Paul said: “It’s important we do as much as we can to minimise our environmental impact as a company. The steps we’ve already taken are quick wins that will immediately help reduce One Care’s impact on the environment. In the next few months, we’ll be looking at other, longer-term measures we can take to reduce it even further, such as renewable-only energy supply.”

New intelligence dashboards to support practices’ vaccine delivery

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One Care has launched its 2022/23 winter vaccination dashboards, to help practices track progress delivering vaccinations to eligible groups.

There are two dashboards – one for Covid-19 autumn boosters and one for flu vaccinations – which will show practices and primary care networks (PCNs) how many vaccinations they’ve delivered each week.

The dashboards have been designed specifically for practice staff to quickly gain insight on progress through eligible cohorts.

All practices will be able to see their own data, and PCNs can also view each of their practices along with an aggregate view.

Practices can see the dashboards using this link and their unique practice / PCN login.

Rhys Lewis, Head of Digital at One Care, said: “This is the fourth dashboard we’ve set up to help general practices track how many of their patients they’ve vaccinated. It’s a service we started providing during the Covid-19 pandemic, and it’s something we know works well.

“The data in the dashboards can be broken down in several different ways, including patient ethnicity and index of multiple deprivation (IMD) group, which will help practices know which groups they may need to target in their patient communications.

“We hope they continue to be useful to our practices, and as ever we welcome any feedback on them so we can make improvements.”

Work ramping up for autumn vaccination drive

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Preparations are underway for this autumn’s flu and Covid-19 vaccinations in general practice across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG).

The vaccination programme is a huge undertaking, with around 345,000 people in BNSSG eligible to be vaccinated. There will be around 4,000 staff and volunteers involved in delivering vaccines this year, many of whom will need refresher training.

It will see general practice working in partnership with acute hospitals, community pharmacy and mass vaccination centres to reach as much of the eligible population as possible.

The programme will focus on those most vulnerable to Covid-19 and flu first, starting with health and social care staff, care home residents, those who are housebound, and the clinically vulnerable.

Ruth Hughes, One Care’s Programme Manager for PCN-based vaccinations, said: “The mass vaccination programme for flu and Covid-19 is a big commitment for general practices, so it’s fantastic all 20 of BNSSG’s primary care networks are taking part. Their involvement, plus that of our partners in community pharmacy and the mass vaccination centres, is crucial and means people shouldn’t need to travel far for their vaccination.

“The programme is also a huge opportunity to maximise the population’s protection against flu and Covid-19. We have vaccines for both that are safe to administer at the same time – including a new version of the Covid-19 vaccine.

“Our hope is that we will be able to offer everyone who’s eligible a vaccination before Christmas.”

 

Staff sharing app now live in Network 4 PCN

News

The collaborative bank project has entered an exciting new phase, as Network 4 becomes the first Primary Care Network (PCN) in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) to use the Ryalto staff sharing app.

The collaborative bank project aims to enable sharing of staff across primary and community care in BNSSG. This will be done through a web and phone-based app developed by a company called Ryalto. It is hoped the project will increase workforce agility, reduce the need to use agency staff, and give staff the opportunity to develop their skills and experience across the BNSSG health and care system.

The project team is currently looking for practices who would like to use the app, initially within their PCN, with hopes staff sharing will expand to locality and eventually BNSSG level.

Network 4’s vaccination centre staff and volunteers are currently using the app to book their shifts. User adoption of the software has been highly successful, with 80% of eligible users becoming active on the app in less than a week. The app allows users to book shifts, see the latest organisational updates and communicate through secure chats.

Caroline Down, team leader for the Network 4 vaccination centre, said “I’m really excited to be using the Ryalto app to allocate shifts for the approaching Autumn booster campaign. A huge thanks to all our staff for adopting the technology so well and another thanks to Ryalto and One Care for their support during the onboarding process. I look forward to continuing to use the app over the next couple of months.”

Josh Cooper, One Care’s project manager for collaborative bank, said “We are delighted the initial onboarding of Network 4 vaccination clinic staff has been a success. A large proportion of the available shifts have already been booked and Ryalto have received some great initial user feedback. We will use what we’ve learned from the launch to streamline future onboarding. We hope other PCNs will join Network 4 in using the app for the upcoming booster vaccination campaign.”

If practices or PCNs are interested in taking part in the project, please contact josh.cooper@onecare.org.uk.