The Alliance has recently appointed a project manager, Tracey Teasdale, to take forward the proposals within Enhanced Primary Care (EPC).
EPC forms one of the three Vanguard workstreams alongside Community Integrated Teams and Recovery at Home, and aims to develop a range of co-ordinated, integrated, community based services which focus on care for those patients with long term conditions; seeing that they are managed more proactively and offered better self-care tools.
As we progress through the next few weeks and months, Tracey will be consulting over the various plans that are taking shape. She is aiming to attend locality and practice meetings across the city to update GPs and their teams on the proposed plans and would welcome your feedback on how the proposals could be further developed.
At present, plans exist to:
- review diabetes care across the city, and develop locality hub and spoke diabetes services for insulin initiation and up-titration;
- consider AF/stroke prevention pathways and complement existing services by providing GP access to 24-hour ECG monitoring in a 12 month pilot;
- support infrastructure projects including Map of Medicine, a clinical reference tool for all the surgeries in Sunderland, and alignment of care homes to GP surgeries.
One of the first pieces of work we would like to involve practices with is an audit of diabetes and review of high cost patient groups. Payments will be available to practices to undertake this work which is closely linked to the work being undertaken by the new CCG Diabetes Specialist Nurse. Expect to hear more in early February.
If you have any questions regarding the enhanced primary care programme, or if you want to get more involved please contact Tracey on [email protected].