The leading purpose of our Primary Care Network is to facilitate co-operation between the practices to better provide integrated and complete enhanced services to the people in surrounding areas.
Our enhanced support services
Paramedics
The role of a paramedic in the context of our PCN:
Our PCN paramedics are part of the multi-disciplinary team that makes up the additional roles to provide services to our practices.
PCN paramedics are primarily house-bound based enabling them to support elderly and frail patients at home, whether it be for acute or long-term issues. They are also able to undertake long-term condition reviews, which may be at the practice or at home depending on the patient’s needs.
Our paramedics work as part of the team to support the doctors and the advanced nurse practitioners in the surgery. They are also able to triage calls that come in so that they are placed with the most appropriate clinician.
Proactive care nurse
Our PCN proactive care nurse forms part of our multi-disciplinary team that makes up the additional roles to provide services to our practices.
This role is to predominantly focus on proactive measures that can be implemented to reduce health inequalities, look at local population needs and to implement new services as needed. A large part of this role is also focussing on frailty, and interventions to prevent deterioration in frailty, as well as implementing strategies and services to support patients to Live well. Age well and die well.
This role will be looking at practice level and neighbourhood level need and work with patients and practice staff to reduce the health inequality gap.
Care co-ordinator
Care co-ordinators are a key feature of our Primary Care Network team. They work closely with social prescribers, physios, clinical pharmacists and GP practices.
Care co-ordinators can act as the single point of contact (POC) for a patient. This in-turn facilitates patient interaction with our network and ensures we can provide the best possible and most meaningful experience for our patients.
Find out more by watching the NHS comprehensive model of personalised care YouTube video.
Physician associate
The role of a physician associate:
Physician associates are healthcare professionals trained in the medical model they are able to diagnose, manage, and investigate problems and they are able to see patients very similar to a doctor. They have their own clinic and can see routine and acute patients. They work closely with the doctors and nurse practitioners within the surgery.
First contact physiotherapist
We subcontract our physiotherapists for our PCN from Primary Care Physio. The team are based in the practice and have additional clinics. First contact physiotherapists can be booked via the normal process; by phoning reception, who will triage whether it is appropriate that they go straight in and see the physiotherapist first, or whether they see another clinician who can book them in with the physiotherapist.
Find out more by watching the NHS What is a first contact physiotherapist? YouTube video.
Children’s counsellor and mental health nurse
The role of a children’s counsellor:
Children’s counsellors are subcontracted from GP Primary Choice. They accept referrals from all the surgeries within the PCN. They triage and offer children aged from 4 to 17 years 11 months, a course of counselling to aid mental health.
Our children’s counsellors are based at East Lynne Medical Centre on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
However, any patient from all six surgeries can be seen at these clinics. Should anyone be seeking this service they can ask their receptionist for an appointment with a clinician to discuss referral to the children’s counsellor.
The role of a children’s mental health nurse:
We now have a children’s mental health nurse who is now working across all 6 practice’s to support our children who need that extra support.
She runs a triage service over the phone Monday to Friday in the morning and face to face clinic’s on the following days:
- Monday – Old Road Surgery
- Wednesday – East Lynne Medical Practice
- Friday – North Clacton Medical Group
All patients from all 6 practice’s are able to use the children’s mental health service and patients can be seen at any of her working locations.
Mental health
We have a mental health clinician within each practice every week. Any other clinician within the surgery team is able to refer to a mental health practitioner for assessment. They can see patients face to face; provide consultations over the phone; and directly talk to mental health consultants to support and assist a patient’s mental health within the PCN.
Our PCN mental health service is provided by EPUT.
GP assistant
The role of a GP assistant:
As part of the wider team in general practice, general practice assistants provide a support role, carrying out administrative tasks, combined in some areas with basic clinical duties. They can help to free up GPs time and contribute to the smooth running of appointments, improving patients experience in the surgery.
Clinical pharmacist
The clinical pharmacist’s role within our PCN:
We have six clinical pharmacists who work across our practices. They provide support with routine medication reviews, medication changes, significant medication reviews, prescription requests and discharges.
Our clinical pharmacist services are subcontracted by Core Prescribing Solutions.
Pharmacy technician
The role of a pharmacy technician:
The pharmacy technician’s role is primarily to support the clinical pharmacists. They service the administrative-focused work to support the clinical pharmacists. Pharmacy technicians are able to review some more simple medications and make changes for other clinician’s to authorise. The pharmacy technician can perform drug-monitoring and medication-monitoring work such as DMARDs (Disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs).
Our pharmacy technician services are subcontracted by Core Prescribing Solutions.
Social prescriber
The role of a social prescriber within our PCN:
Each of our practices has a social prescriber aligned to the surgery.
Our social prescribers are subcontracted by CVS Tendring (Clacton Voluntary Services Tendring). They are based in the surgery and are able to see patients in person or over the phone. Social prescribers are referred by other clinicians within the GP practice.
How it works:
A social prescriber will sit and listen to a patient’s situation through conversation. A social prescription refers to the awareness that sometimes a medicine is not needed for every individual, and rather an issue may stem from the patient’s social situation which they may require support with to improve their health.
How they can help:
A social prescriber can support issues such as weight management, housing, getting a patient involved in activities (social/group activities), voluntary services, transport and day trips.
Social prescribers are part of the voluntary sector. They will speak to a patient and help to identify an issue and in-turn prescribe a social solution to support and solve a patient’s issue.
Digital transformation lead
The role of a digital and transformation lead:
The digital and transformation lead works within the PCN on a range of digital and transformation projects such as the use of cloud telephony, digital triage, online signposting, social media, optimising the use of clinical systems and support with quality indicators to transform services within our PCN.
Community cancer care nurse
The role of a community cancer care nurse:
The cancer care nurse will be the cancer go to person within the Primary Care Network, and will raise cancer on the PCN’s agenda. This will result in improved cancer identification and two-week wait referral quality, which will mean a better patient experience at point of diagnosis. These patients will be safety-netted by their cancer care nurse who will have strong links to secondary care roles such as the pre-diagnosis nurse specialist.
Other areas being focused on:
- improved early diagnosis of cancer
- improved quality of cancer referrals from the PCN
- increase in uptake of cancer care reviews
- increased uptake to health and wellbeing events
- improved quality of life outcomes for patients in Tendring
This role is funded by Macmillan.
Training educator
The role of a training educator:
Our PCN training educator is part of our workforce team, there main focus is to help support the PCN management team and all of the practice’s within the PCN with the following:
- robust strategic workforce plans based on local need for PCNs in SNEE
- offer education and training to the PCN workforce
- increasing placement capacity
- supporting and retention of workforce