From:                              Poppulo Design <design@poppulo.com>

Sent:                               31 May 2017 17:03

To:                                   Dyhian Mckenzie

Subject:                          In Touch: St George's newsletter for GPs and primary care colleagues - May/June 2017

 

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May 2017

News and updates for primary care colleagues

 

Greetings to all,

Welcome to the May/June 2017 issue of Intouch, the newsletter dedicated to keeping you our colleagues in primary care informed.

As another way for us to keep you updated, and to strengthen communication between us, we hope to run education sessions in local practices. Please let me know if you would be prepared to host one in your building premises. We will continue to run the monthly evening education sessions and thank you for your support in attending these.

In other news from me, the directory of services has been finalised and is available here: https://www.stgeorges.nhs.uk/gps-and-clinicians/services/

As always we welcome feedback, and any topics you would like us to feature.  Please email In.Touch@stgeorges.nhs.uk

With best wishes,


Dyhian Mckenzie-Manning

Assistant Primary Care Liaison Manager

https://www.stgeorges.nhs.uk

 

In this issue

 

Welcome message from the Medical Director

Directory of Services

 

 

Elective Care Recovery Programme Update

Transforming Outpatients update

 

 

New appointments

Free education sessions for primary care

 

 

Iron binding studies

More online E-Referral appointment slots now available

 

 

St George’s referral fax numbers are now working

GP Quality Alerts

 

 

Patients nationwide to benefit from Thrombectomy innovation

Nelson Health Centre clinics on E-Referral for all GPs

 

Welcome messages

 

 

Welcome message from the Medical Director

 

 

Thank you for reading our latest newsletter. It's a time of positive change at St George's. We have a permanent new chief executive officer, HR director and director of delivery, efficiency and transformation in place; and we have appointed a new chief financial officer. They bring huge experience of running major London Trusts and tackling the challenges of our health economy.

As I mentioned in the last newsletter, we have been active in engaging more with GPs. Our outpatients transformation team has been out to listen to groups of GPs in Wandsworth and Merton in 2017 - taking on board your concerns and sharing our challenges and work to improve things.

We need to change and better serve patients and primary care colleagues. In this issue you can read about work already underway clinically and administratively to improve aspects of our services.

We value your feedback and support. Please do email views and questions. Together we can improve St George's performance, strive to provide high quality 21st century care, and give you and our patients a better experience.

Professor Andrew Rhodes

Medical Director

 

 

Features and news

 

 

Directory of Services

We are pleased to advise we have a new Directory of Services, available online with interactive navigation. The document is a small PDF file available here to download and print: www.stgeorges.nhs.uk/gps-and-clinicians/services/

Elective Care Recovery Programme Update

As GPs will know, waiting times are too long across many specialties at St George’s. We  also have inaccurate and incomplete data for many patients’ progress on their elective care pathways.

Read more

 

 

Transforming Outpatients update

More than 100 of our consultants are now active and available to answer your queries via the secure Kinesis online messaging service. 

Read more

New appointments

Jacqueline Totterdell has started as our new Chief Executive - joining from Barts Health NHS Trust, where she was chief operating officer.

Read more

 

 

 

Something clinical

 

 

Iron binding studies

Previously iron binding studies (IBS) were added automatically to samples with a raised ferritin. This practice has stopped as it was felt that frequently it was not clinically useful and it was adding unnecessary costs. 

Read more

 

 

 

Service updates and messages

 

 

More online E-Referral appointment slots now available

As well as tackling our underlying waiting list problems, we are working hard to increase the number of slots available for GPs to book online via the e-Referral service (previously known as ‘Choose and Book’) across specialties. There is a national and local target to increase the proportion of GP referrals made online.

Read more

St George’s referral fax numbers are now working

The issues with receiving urgent and routine referrals via fax have now been resolved.

Referrals received via alternative methods while the faxes were down are continuing to be actioned.

Thanks you for your patience while the issues were being investigated.

 

 

GP Quality Alerts

A GP quality alert is an informal complaint which you (primary care colleagues) can raise if you have been unable to resolve an issue through normal routes. We aim to respond within 15 working days.

To raise a concern or GP quality alert, please email Stgh-tr.gpqualityalert@nhs.net

Nelson Health Centre clinics on E-Referral for all GPs

All GP practices referring into St George’s outpatient clinics can now book slots online at The Nelson Health Centre via e-Referral. Availability for the Nelson Health Centre is included in the attached table. You can find out more about the site and its facilities here.

 

 

 

Success Stories

 

 

Patients nationwide to benefit from Thrombectomy innovation

An emergency treatment for stroke patients used at St George’s Hospital is being rolled out across the UK, benefiting an estimated 8,000 patients. NHS England is commissioning mechanical thrombectomy so it can become more widely available for patients who have certain types of acute ischaemic stroke.

 

 

Education and events

 

Free education sessions for primary care

 

Thank you for continuing to support our free monthly evening education sessions.  The topics we have planned are based on your feedback from the evaluation forms that you complete at these sessions, so please continue to fill them in. Each lecture carries 2 CPD points and a certificate of attendance will be given.  I hope these talks will continue to be both interesting and valuable for you.

Read more

 

 

Comments and feedback

To share your comments and feedback, please contact me:

Dyhian Mckenzie-Manning, Assistant Primary Care Liason Manager

Tel: 020 8725 2185 | E: In.Touch@stgeorges.nhs.uk

Useful links:

St George’s University Hospitals Website

South West London Pathology Website