Welcome to Gwent LMC
Gwent LMC is the statutory representative body for GPs working in what is widely known as 'Greater Gwent'. In October 2009 the former Gwent NHS Healthcare Trust and five Local Health Boards were changed by Health reorganisation in Wales to form the Aneurin Bevan Local Health Board, now known as Aneurin Bevan University Health Board. This covers both hospital services and primary care.
The Gwent LMC's representatives are drawn from each of the five locality areas and from a further constituency of sessional/locum doctors.
The full LMC meets on the second Friday of each month other than August. Representatives also meet monthly with the Locality Medical directors and primary Care Officers to discuss relevant issues of common interest, notably the commissioning of enhanced services. Additionally representatives sit on a wide ranging number of committees representing the views of primary care, at a National and local level.
BMA - Urgent prescription for general practice
The BMA launched the Urgent Prescription for General Practice campaign, publishing the first of a three part analysis from the workload pressures survey responses received from GP practices in England and Wales, showing the extent of the pressures they are under.
The issues have had significant coverage and practices should have received resource packs to help with raising their concerns locally. A tremendous amount of media coverage and social media activity has been generated around the published survey data, including on workload, demand levels, financial viability, workforce and more – all of which are available on the campaign home page, and can also be downloaded, or shared on social media.
Media coverage has so far included the front page of the Guardian plus mentions in four other national newspapers; five mentions on national radio, including the Today programme; five mentions on TV news; 58 on BBC regional radio and a number of other regional media hits. The Urgent Prescription for General Practice campaign web hub has had a total of 10,770 page views with 13 minutes being the average time spent on the page, and #gpincrisis has been used 2,014 times with a total reach of 6,926,036 since the project launched. The total number of retweets/likes is 820 with 108 people now using the project Twibbon.
www.bma.org.uk/working-for-change/urgent-prescription-for-general-practice
BMA Quality First
The GPC document - Quality first: managing workload to deliver safe patient care confirms that, despite pressures, the safe provision of care to patients must remain GPs’ overriding priority, and so with reference to this the LMC informs that consultation is underway about how LMC can support practices with this approach.
The LMC has now presented this approach to the Medical Director, the CEO and also at a meeting with the Clinical Directors in August.
It is hoped that this advice, documents and standard template letters, that can be sent back to the requestor, will allow practices to control the influx of innapropriate workload.
We have also included a standardised form, for practices to report back to the LMC, which will allow monitoring of any inappropriate work transfer on a regular basis. This will continue to inform discussion with ABUHB representatives and identify any service gaps in provision.