DAILY COVID BRIEFING DDLMC 16.3.2020
DAILY COVID BRIEFING DDLMC 16.3.2020
Dear Colleagues,
We have decided to send out a daily briefing to ALL PRACTICES, to keep you informed of the evolving national and local picture in general practice. If there are no updates you will not hear from us.
KEY MESSAGES FOR TODAY
RESPONSIBILITY OF CARE FOR MODERATELY-ILL, SELF ISOLATING PATIENTS WITH NO POSITIVE TEST RESULTS
There is some confusion over where the responsibility lies for those patients who are self-isolating, as they meet the diagnostic criteria, but who have not had a test performed AND who need medical care for worsening symptoms and / or non-covid-19 clinical conditions. This has been identified as a serious gap since the change of the definition on Friday which currently sits outside the standard operating procedure for general practice. The CCG are urgently working on a solution.
SUPENSION OF CQC/SQI
CQC have today confirmed that they will immediately suspend all routine inspections, including telephone calls, enabling GPs and their teams to dedicate their time for providing front line care.
SQI visits, by the CCG, will be postponed until further notice
The CCG have assured us that Q1 LCSF / BOS payments for 2020/21 will revert to the 4 existing CCG arrangements to retain status quo ie practices will receive full block payments for this work. The CCG have also postponed all telephone calls and meetings pertaining to these enhanced services until further notice.
We will be supporting all practices who push back on unnecessary, non-contractual work at this time. Please inform us if you are receiving requests for work which detracts from being able to perform the urgent patient care required during the pandemic.
PRESS REQUESTS
In light of the rapid and ongoing changes regarding COVID-19, DDDLMC will be coordinating press requests and responses via our office to ensure a consistent message to practices and the general public. If practices/GPs are approached individually by the press, please could you contact DDLMC via our email ddlmc.office@nhs.net or phone 01332 21008 and we will respond on your behalf.
ACTIONS in the next 24hours
We will await response from the CCG re: request to suspend QOF whilst maintaining practice income.
DDLMC will await response from the Responsible Officer following our request to defer ALL appraisal activity. For GPs who should revalidate in 2020 we will be asking for an automatic 1 year extension.
We have created a RESOURCE BANK with lots of useful information for practices including:
COVID-19 information for practice websites
Draft Business Continuity Plans
Wellbeing support
Patient information sheets.
If there are any additional resource you would like to add please let us know.
We know you have all been working flat-out this weekend contingency planning for this unprecedented situation and we want to thank you for your continued hard work. We appreciate the huge pressure practice teams are under and we are here to support you as practices and individuals.