DAILY COVID-19 BRIEFING DDLMC – 22.04.2020
NATIONAL UPDATES
Ramadan. In recognition of the start of the holy month of Ramadan tomorrow the British Islamic Medical Association has produced the attached Rapid Review and Recommendations (A). This provides advice and guidance for various conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
LOCAL UPDATES
Safeguarding Managing risk to vulnerable children (B) and Responding to safeguarding concerns (C). Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Partnership have asked us to share “DDSCP Chief Officers have requested that urgent updates are produced to sit alongside existing safeguarding arrangements and make clear any additional considerations or updated action is needed to keep children and families safe. The attached updates have been produced consistent with newly issued national guidance and in consultation with key senior leads from relevant agencies who have approved the content. They are also available at: Derby and Derbyshire Safeguarding Partnership COVID-19 webpage alongside information and guidance on all updated arrangements.”
Sending ReSPECT forms to the CRH Electronic Document Repository. We have received the following update from CRH: “Thank you for all you are doing in Primary and Community care to ensure patients have up to date ReSPECT forms. Unfortunately, in the rush of an emergency admission these are not always brought in with the patient to the hospital. In order to ensure that the patient’s Recommended Summary Plan for Emergency Care and Treatment is made readily available to emergency care staff at CRH please do the following:
- If completing an electronic form within your EPR when complete simply click email in the Word window.
- If a paper form then please scan each form as an individual pdf and attach to an email.
- Address the email to crhft.cito@nhs.net
- Make the subject of the email ReSPECT form.
- Add the patient’s name, and if you have it hospital number, in the body of the email.
- Send.”
GP practice and PCN COVID-19 Expenses. The CCG has agreed to receive invoices from PCNs and GP practices for COVID-19 expenses. Practices/ PCNs have two options.
- The first option (Option 1 Tab on the attached spreadsheet (D.)) is an example report extracted straight from your accounting software negating the need for any spreadsheets. If you set up an appropriate COVID code to collect the expenses, which many of you may have already done this will make the task simple. Your report can then be attached, or the necessary detail generated on the invoice and submitted via Tradeswift.
- The second option is to record expenses via the Excel template (Option 2 Tab on the attached spreadsheet) and submit with your invoice via Tradeswift. Notes are included on tab 3. Our thanks to Gill Francis for designing the excel template and notes and PMs including Tim Skinner for their contributions.
Any difficulties with this, please email ddccg.finance@nhs.net.
Phlebotomy. We published an update on the Phlebotomy services in the old SDCCG area last week. The CCG have now provided an update (attached (E.)) which covers the current situation across the whole of Derbyshire.
Minor Eye Conditions The CCG have asked us to share “To assist with the current pressures in GP practices and hospitals, the CCG is temporarily expanding the Minor Eye Conditions (MECS) Pilot Service to enable GP Practices to signpost patients at the point of triage (either face to face or by phone) to a number of Opticians in the area that will be able to triage them via telephone / video call. Information in attached documents for GPs (F.) and patients (G.). It is hoped that if this pilot works that it can be expanded across the rest of Derbyshire.
The CCG will be recording data and outcomes as part of the COVID-19 response, but it would also be helpful if you can provide any feedback/questions/comments back to the CCG on this to enable us to refine/improve this pilot as appropriate via the CCG communications inbox, ddccg.communications@nhs.net
We think this provides a valuable opportunity to test the expansion of the MECS whilst minimising the risks from COVID-19 to patients and clinicians.”
OTHER UPDATES
Shielded Patients
- NHSE Primary Care Daily Update. The attached powerpoint (H.) has some useful information on the support that high risk patients can access.
- TPP Self-declared High-Risk Patients. The list of self-declaring patients has now been uploaded into a report in SystmOne, which practices can find by searching “self-declared and practices are advised to review these lists in accordance with the instructions.
Giving news of a patient’s death to a loved one: This is a real useful one-page evidence-based summary for staff who might have to break the news of a death.
Practice Nurse Support. Wessex LMC and HEE have produced a useful booklet for Practice Nurses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Decontamination Offer. JUCD have asked us to share the following: “ Johnsons have recently launched a Touchless disinfection service. Partly, so we can decontaminate all of our own vehicles, equipment, and areas we are working in, but also so we can offer this out to our clients. Recently, this solution has been used to disinfect PPE such as FFP3, FFP2 masks, visors, hoods and some gowns. Our owners are willing to offer this service free to local NHS”.
Anyone interested please contact Barbara Evans Director of Client Engagement on either 0800 279 2505 or 07738 635 716 or bevans@johnsons1871.co.uk
KEY MESSAGES FOR THE PUBLIC
The success of the stay at home message is now having some very serious consequences with examples of COVID-19 patients not seeking consultations until symptoms have deteriorated to a worrying degree. In addition, patients with serious non COVID-19 conditions are also staying away from GPs and secondary care. The messaging will be adapted to get the message out that the healthcare system is still open, and patients should contact practices.
AND FINALLY…
From yesterday - Found it. Thanks to Dr Ian Lawrence from DCHS who shared the attached guidance to clarify the Lockdown Rules. Number 12 is my favourite.
We have been struggling to understand why we were getting repeated requests from people to be added to the distribution list for this update. Our fantastic office team (Louise Ola and Andrea) have been updating this every day for us and after an extensive investigation we have discovered that there was an error in the seat/keyboard interface when sending out the update. This has now been updated and I promise I will try and use the updated list rather than an old one from now on. Many apologies to everyone involved.