Homeless Patient Registrations & Primary Care Access During COVID-19
RE: Homeless Patient Registrations & Primary Care Access During COVID-19
Issue:
As a response to COVID-19, central government announced the “Everyone In” plan, asking local authorities to provide accommodation to rough sleepers. Derby and Derbyshire General Practice have a critical role, in line with our Local Resilience Forum agreed objectives, to:
- Register these people as either temporary or permanent patients and offer full health assessments (if already registered, continue access to Primary Healthcare)
- Refer these patient into mental health and substance misuse services
- Identify shielded patients from this cohort
- Assess their wider health needs.
CCG Response:
The CCG will facilitate a service to support clinical decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic 2020 for the homeless population who have been placed in designated hotels in the Derby City and Derbyshire County area. The aim is to manage homeless patients remotely whilst they are living at designated hotels. This supports reducing direct patient contact and thereby infection risk, and unnecessary hospital admission. In addition, following clinical triage where a face to face pre-booked appointment is required, then patients will be transported to and from the designated practice by the existing Red Hub patient transport service provided by City Taxis.
Patient Transport - Following patient triage (via telephone) where a healthcare professional will have identified the patient as requiring a face-to-face assessment at their registered practice, the hotel staff member will ring the dedicated Derbyshire CCG hotline on 01246 555 100 and request a taxi to take the patient to the their GP appointment. The staff member will give the taxi company the following information:
- Provide booking code: DGP01
- Patient name
- Hotel address and postcode
- Patient telephone number
- Patients GP practice
- Appointment time
- Any mobility issues of patient (wheelchair etc.).
Any booking request made after 5.30pm should be planned for the next working day (may vary depending on location).
City Taxis have been contracted to supply taxis five days a week (Monday to Friday). The taxis will be available to transport patients from 8am until 6pm to and from the practice where the homeless residents are registered at.
For homeless people in Derby City, Wilson St Surgery have kindly agreed to bolster their existing Homeless Enhanced Service with a supplementary COVID-19 homelessness-specific clinical service which will be reviewed regularly.
A Remote Consultations facility is in place for video and/or voice calling with patients residing at Pride Park Holiday Inn Express (Derby City). The CCG have deployed 2 dedicated smartphones for this hotel (and are imminently due to receive a supply of SteriTouch mobile device disposable sleeves for infection control). A similar option is being explored for the County.
Action for Practices:
Following this generic email to all practices, I will target individual emails to those practices whose patients are currently residing at the temporary hotel accommodation. Due to CCG inability to hold patient identifiable information, we ask you to then proactively access your patients’ details, by contacting the following City and County homelessness support staff, respectively:
CITY HOMELESS HOTEL (Holiday Inn Express – Pride Park)
Amy Rawlings (REST Project Manager)
Derby Homes Limited
07467688449
COUNTY HOMELESS HOTEL (Twin Oaks – Off Junction 29 of M1)
Gemma Murphy (Operations Manager)
P3 - People Potential Possibilities
07794286236
If you have any other queries in relation to this matter, then please contact me on: 07919466235 or via email at sim.sall@nhs.net