Tag Archives: One Care

Introducing the new general practice activity data (GPAD) slot analysis tool

News, , , ,

One Care’s business intelligence team, with support from Pier Health, has developed a new Excel tool to help practices accurately code their slots and ensure their data is in line with national guidance. This can increase funding for indicators linked to national slot categories like ACC-08.

Using the slot analysis tool, practices can see how all slots were mapped to national categories in previous months, giving them a clear visual overview of all slot allocations across their PCN for a period of time. Many slots were previously incorrectly mapped, which impacted practices’ income.

Harry Paul, data manager at One Care, said “We realised practices were finding the national dashboard complicated and regularly delayed in data provision. Consequently, slots were being mapped incorrectly meaning practices may not have been paid correctly for the work being done.

“Our new slot analysis tool reconciles what activity practices believe has taken place, with the activity that has actually taken place. It provides accurate and reliable data and we’d encourage all practices to use it. This development would not have been possible without One Care’s Kah Chan and Joe Smith at Pier Health.”

The new tool will:

  • ensure accurate retrospective slot coding
  • allow practices to check slots are mapped correctly to improve slot-linked payments
  • provide useful data for forward planning

Practices keen to find out more and to be given access to the analysis tool should contact business.intelligence@onecare.org.uk

 

Making One Care a greener organisation

News, , , ,

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.”

One Care service helps practices save time on referrals

News, , ,

One Care’s Digital Support team has been helping practices across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire clean up their referral resources.

Since the introduction of a centrally managed document hub, Resource Publisher, in August 2021, many practices found they had old or duplicate referral forms stored on their systems.

To solve this problem, One Care began offering a form consolidation service to practices. The service sees One Care’s Digital Support team remotely accessing practices’ systems and archiving the out of date and duplicate forms.

Stephanie Hatton, One Care’s Digital Consultant said: “This service brings a lot of benefits for practices. It saves clinicians and administration staff time, ensuring they are only using the latest forms so they can be confident the referrals they send have the necessary information.

“Because we can do the work in the background, practices can keep using their systems as normal, and their administration staff can work on other things.

“So far, we’ve delivered the service to 30 of our practices, and the feedback has been positive. We’d love to help any other practices who’d like it.”

The consolidation service is available to all One Care practices in BNSSG as part of their subscription. If you would like to find out more, please contact digital@onecare.org.uk

 

 

 

New Integrated Care Board assumes responsibility for NHS in BNSSG

News, ,

Today marks an exciting step in the provision of healthcare in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG), as a new organisation takes responsibility for the day to day running of the NHS in the area.

Following the dissolution of BNSSG Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), the BNSSG Integrated Care Board (ICB) will now arrange the provision of NHS services, manage the NHS budget, and look after the health needs of the area’s population.

ICBs were legally established across England on 1 July 2022, while clinical commissioning groups were abolished.

In BNSSG, the ICB forms part of the area’s Integrated Care Partnership (ICP). The ICP is formed between the ICB and BNSSG’s three local authorities.

It brings together a broad range of partners – including the local voluntary sector and community groups – and sets strategy to meet the population’s health, care and wellbeing needs.

The Integrated Care Partnership and Integrated Care Board are key elements in the Integrated Care System (ICS) for BNSSG.

The ICS comprises 10 partner organisations, including the three local authorities, NHS trusts, the new ICB, and community and general practice healthcare providers. It is also known as the Healthier Together Partnership.

Although Healthier Together has been active as a partnership for some time, it now has legal status after the Health and Care Act 2022 formalised new arrangements to ensure ICSs become statutory entities from 1 July 2022.

The ICS partners are:

Senior representatives from these organisations have seats on the ICB board. General practice’s voting member will be Dr Jonathan Hayes, Chair of the GP Collaborative Board. Ruth Taylor, Chief Executive of One Care, will also attend in a non-voting capacity.

Within the ICS sit six locality partnerships. These operate on a smaller scale within the ICS, responding to the unique needs of their local populations.

The locality partnerships in BNSSG are South Gloucestershire, North and West Bristol, Inner City and East Bristol, South Bristol, Woodspring, and Weston, Worle and Villages. Locality partnerships include general practice, social care, community services, hospitals, voluntary sector, and mental health services – working alongside local people and communities to improve health and wellbeing.

One Care Chief Executive Ruth Taylor said: “This is a really exciting development. One Care and the GP Collaborative Board are looking forward to working more closely with our partners in the new ICS. We are excited to attend the first meeting of the Integrated Care Board today, ensuring effective general practice representation in leadership discussions.”

One Care support for our practices: October-December 2021

News, , , , , , , ,

We have published our latest quarterly round-up of strategic changes, information about new One Care projects and a one page infographic showing the direct support we’ve provided to practices.

The last three months have continued to present general practice with extreme challenges and pressures. The highly transmissible Omicron variant of Covid-19 has driven unprecedented levels of infections globally, resulting in NHS England and the government asking general practice, along with the wider system, to focus on vaccinations and urgent care.

In mid-December, to support practices with their booster rollout targets, One Care staff temporarily stood down from normal duties to provide extra resourcing to practices. One Care staff offered their services to PCNs, helping with various administrative, marshalling and reception tasks. In total, 57 shifts were covered at 14 venues and the feedback we received from practices about our staff was fantastic. Similarly, members of the team enjoyed going into the surgeries and vaccination centres, meeting new people, gaining new experiences, and witnessing first-hand the demands of the booster programme.

Click here to enlarge infographic.

At the same time, One Care worked alongside NBT and VANS to create a more efficient process for PCNs and practices to request staff and volunteers for the mass vaccination programme. The newly-launched model sees One Care act as a single point of access for mass vaccination staffing requests rather than there being multiple avenues to request cover from, which often resulted in double bookings. This makes the process more efficient and time effective for general practice, staff, volunteers and system partners. This process was enabled by the staff sharing agreements One Care contributed to during the pandemic, which allow healthcare professionals to work across the different organisations in our region.

To help practices prepare for the potential impact of Omicron, One Care established an escalation framework to assist practices with a pragmatic checklist of operational considerations during the surge. To ensure general practice was well represented and involved in system decisions during this period of system pressure, we relaunched the SitRep to get a better understanding of the issues faced by practices. We used this information alongside the general practice activity report to represent general practice at all system bronze, silver and gold meetings.

It has been widely recognised that Covid-19, and the wider effects of the pandemic, have significantly impacted mental health, aggravating pre-existing conditions as well as affecting people who have not previously experienced poor mental health. One Care has been working with a PCN in South Bristol to identify patients with an active mental health condition who might benefit from a tailored intervention. The practice has provided us with great feedback about this piece of work, so please do get in touch if you would be interested in looking at something similar in your PCN.

Our business intelligence team have also added a Serious Mental Illness (SMI) dashboard to the General Practice Intelligence Dashboard. The dashboard shows what proportion of people on practices’ SMI register, who should receive a set of six physical health checks, have had each of the health checks and how many have had the full set. Easy access to this data supports practices to focus on where uptake of physical health checks can be improved, which will help maximise on available income and improve patient outcomes.

A key priority for One Care in recent months has seen the successful rollout of community phlebotomy – a new process for taking bloods in community settings. For many years, general practice has taken outpatient bloods on behalf of secondary care, despite not being contracted for the work. But the community phlebotomy programme has addressed the governance of this work, ensuring blood results are returned to the requester in secondary care and general practices are resourced for this programme.

One Care have further saved general practice time by creating, updating and sharing templates to the latest referral forms through Resource Publisher, meaning practices don’t need to maintain these templates themselves. To publish resources to a practice, technical data sharing agreements are needed. One Care now has these in place with 99 per cent of practices, as well as most PCNs and localities.

During this period, our subscription model for the next three years was signed off by our Board. We had intended to start meeting with PCNs in December to discuss this, but these meetings were postponed due to the booster programme and have been taking place throughout January and February. Many of you will have now responded to us regarding your intentions for next year. We’ve found these discussions really valuable and will be looking at how we can continue these discussions at more regular intervals moving forward.

We’re also inviting all practices to join us to hear about the work we’ve done throughout 2021/22 and our plans for 2022/23 onwards at our shareholder event on the afternoon of Thursday 28 April 2022. For now, please hold the date and we will share more details in due course.

We’re pleased to say that the One Care team has continued to grow in recent months in line with our development, and all current staff can be found on our website. In recent months, this has included particular growth of our project management capacity in our transformation team. As always, a huge thanks for your continued support. If you would me or a member of the team to visit your practice or attend a locality meeting to talk more about our work and how we can support you, please get in touch.

One Care helping practices benchmark telephony demand

News, , , , , , ,

One Care has updated the telephony information available to practices in their General Practice Intelligence Dashboard (GPID).

The dashboard enables practices to benchmark themselves against other anonymised practices in BNSSG on incoming and unanswered call volumes, as well as the overall percentage of calls unanswered. The data can be tracked and measured over a week, month, quarter and year.

Practices will be able to see where they sit in comparison to each other, including in relation to patient demand and how it is being dealt with (using a rate per 1,000 patients).

This information may inspire a deep dive into practice call volume and how calls are being handled. It could also highlight specific time frames where demand has increased or decreased.

One Care’s business intelligence support analyst Kelly Hawkes commented on the new dashboard saying: “The analytics teams are incredibly excited to launch this dashboard as it offers something to practices that previously they’ve been unable to see.

“Practices are inundated with calls on a daily basis and this dashboard enables them to track this data in line with other practices. This dashboard is available to all Bistech practices and PCNs that have provided consent for One Care to process their telephony data.

“We would encourage as many practices to utilise this dashboard as possible as it offers a further insight into their practice.”

If you would like more information on the dashboard and how to use it, please contact onecare.analytics@onecare.org.uk.

One Care supports practices with learning disability health checks

News, , , , ,

GP surgeries are required to deliver free health checks once a year to anyone aged 14 or over who is on their doctor’s learning disability register.

To help practices identify eligible patients, keep track of health check completion percentages, and visualise insights, One Care launched a dashboard in January 2022, using data exported from EMIS.

Going forward, practices will be able to use the dashboard and its useful features to keep a record of patient information and invite them for their annual health check when appropriate.

While the dashboard enables practices to calculate how many of their patients are eligible for these checks, and how many have been completed, there are other benefits too. Users can sort the data by a range of criteria, for example: ethnicity, deprivation, age and gender – which can highlight inequalities and where targeted support is most required. The dashboard also enables practices to compare different patient groups using the built-in filters, which will offer a greater overview of the BNSSG population and potentially inform future studies.

Speaking about the new dashboard, One Care’s Head of Business Intelligence Rhys Lewis, said: “People with learning disabilities have poorer physical and mental health than others and this has been particularly highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Annual health checks can improve their outcomes by spotting problems early, enabling appropriate treatment and management, and preventing premature and avoidable death.

“The learning disability dashboard provides clinicians and managers with up to date information on how many of their eligible patients have received a health check and how many are outstanding, ensuring maximum uptake by the end of the financial year.”

Eligible patients do not have to be ill to have their health check – in fact, most are well when they accept it. The annual health check can help patients stay well by talking to a doctor or other healthcare professional about their health and medication, and if any concerns are spotted, treatment can be administered before any condition worsens.

If you would like more information on the learning disability health check dashboard and how to use it, please contact onecare.analytics@onecare.org.uk. To learn more about these health checks, visit the NHS website.

Wellbeing service available for health and care staff

News, , , ,

Clinical and non-clinical staff in general practice settings across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) can access a Healthier Together Support Network – a recently-launched health and wellbeing service for all NHS staff.  

As a result of the extraordinary pressure health professionals have been put under by the Covid-19 pandemic, national funding was awarded to set up a new confidential and free wellbeing service, which is there to help staff manage stress caused by or impacting their work, offering:

To learn more about the services, click here (Healthier Together Support Network) or call 0117 342 4740.

There is also a Team Net page with information regarding all wellbeing support available to general practice staff.

One Care support BNSSG practices with booster rollout

News, , , , , , ,

Some One Care staff have temporarily stood down from normal duties in recent weeks to provide extra resourcing for the accelerated booster programme in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG). This support has been offered in addition to One Care’s usual role in coordinating elements of the PCN Covid-19 vaccination programme.

From the week commencing 13 December, staff have been offering their services to Primary Care Networks (PCNs), helping with various administrative, marshalling and reception tasks. To date, 56 shifts have been covered by One Care staff at 14 venues.

Eighty per cent of eligible patients have now received their booster jabs across BNSSG. Just shy of 200,000 vaccinations were given between 12 December 2021 – 4 January 2022, with more than half administered by PCNs.

One Care’s Chief Operating Officer Scott Godley, said: “It’s been fantastic seeing so many of our staff volunteer with the booster rollout programme.

“The feedback we’ve received from practices about our staff has been fantastic and similarly, members of the team have enjoyed going into the surgeries and vaccination centres, meeting new people, gaining new experiences, and witnessing first-hand the demands of the booster programme.”

“The vaccination figures are truly remarkable, particularly in the last few weeks, so a huge thank you and well done to everyone involved,” he continued.

“One Care will continue to make its staff available to volunteer at practices across BNSSG for the next couple of weeks, when it will then be reviewed, and I would encourage practices to take up the offer of support as it’s proven to make a positive difference.”

If your PCN would like to request additional help, please click here.

All adults are reminded they are eligible for their booster jabs, with 12-15 year olds able to receive their second doses.

If you’re yet to receive your first, second or booster vaccination, please visit grabajab.net or call 119. Vaccinations and boosters are the best way to protect you, your friends and family.

Bristol City support Covid-19 booster programme

News, , , ,

One Care and our local vaccination programme teamed up with Bristol City Football Club today (20 December) as the Sky Bet Championship outfit visited Tyntesfield Medical Group’s Brockway Medical Centre.

 

City’s players and staff arrived in Nailsea on their branded team coach to receive their Covid-19 boosters and lend their support to the vaccination programme, helping encourage people in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) to have their Covid booster as soon as possible.

 

In BNSSG – as with the rest of the country – there’s a real drive to scale-up booster vaccinations in response to the Omicron variant by increasing the capacity of booked appointments in existing vaccination sites.

 

With 65% of total vaccinations administered through Primary Care Networks (PCNs) in BNSSG to date, Brockway Medical Centre’s lead GP Dr. Jon Rees said: “We’re delighted to have boosted the Robins today. We hope the team making such a strong public statement about having their boosters, will help encourage others to have their Covid-19 booster vaccination as soon as possible.

 

“Bristol City and other local sports teams have been fantastic advocates since the start of the Covid-19 vaccination campaign. It’s great that our local sports teams are encouraging vaccine uptake in Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire.”

 

Bristol City’s Chief Executive Offer Richard Gould added: “I’m really pleased that so many of the team have had their booster today. A lot of football games were cancelled over the weekend, and we wanted to come down today to help keep football going. I’d like to give credit to the NHS and to our players for being so informed and making the choice to have their Covid-19 booster.”

 

If they haven’t already, your GP surgery will be in touch very soon to offer you an appointment. It’s extremely important to accept your invitation to receive the booster, rather than wait.

 

 

Alternatively, you can use the online National Booking Service, call 119 or visit www.grabajab.net for more vaccination options in your area.

 

Vaccines are the best way to protect yourself, friends, and family from this dangerous virus. Do not put it off until the New Year. Getting your booster is a quick a pain free process.

 

With focus being on vaccinations in the coming weeks, general practice staff are focusing on delivering booster appointments. While you may need to wait until the New Year to get a routine appointment, please be assured that practice teams are still available to look after your urgent care needs, including symptoms that may indicate cancer.