Referral Letters for Urgent Care
We have been made aware that there are sometimes delays in secondary care receiving GP letters following a GP referring patient for urgent admissions/AAU/ A&E. Please can you ensure that all patients are provided with a letter when you direct them to one of these services? If used consistently it can assist practices in supporting evidence where a patient may present at A&E/AAU stating a GP had sent them when they had, indeed, not attended the GP practice; as well as assisting the patient and the Trust.

Individual Funding Requests
We have been made aware of a change to the process for Individual Funding Requests. Correspondence will be sent from the CCGs but please be aware that this system is moving to an entirely online system and paper referrals will no longer be accepted as of 15 December. If you have not already done so, we recommend your practice registers an online account at https://ifr.sotw.nhs.uk.

Seasonal Flu Correspondence
We have been made aware that some practices may be deleting important public health messages with regard to seasonal flu without having read the content. We appreciate that you are inundated with messages from various sources but some of these messages do require action on behalf of the practice which is mandatory. Therefore, it is important you read these messages then manage them appropriately otherwise, by the time the urgent reminder arrives you are left with very little time to respond/collate information in order to meet deadlines.

Dementia Diagnosis Enhanced Service
We were pleased to note that NHS England has listened to concerns and will not be continuing the flawed dementia (diagnosis) enhanced service from April 2015. The GPC have always opposed the chasing of arbitrary targets in diagnosis rates, and believe that what is needed is to look holistically at the detection and management of patients with dementia. It was never believed appropriate to link payments to specific targets as this undermines the relationship GPs have with patients, and the GPC and LMC maintain that care should be based on clinical need rather than financial imperatives.

BMA Message, Chairman’s Email
Every two weeks the BMA distributes an email newsletter from Chaand Nagpaul, Chair of the General Practitioners Committee, to all GPs for whom we have email addresses, irrespective of whether or not they are BMA members. If you aren’t receiving Chaand’s newsletter direct from the BMA:

• BMA members please check your email details through the BMA website bma.org.uk and update if necessary; if you haven’t already done so, you will need to register to set up a web account.
• Non-members with web accounts can also update via the website. Other non-members should send their email details to membership@bma.org.uk quoting their GMC number.

If you are experiencing problems with updating your details, please email membership@bma.org.uk.