With effect from the 1st April 2016 Health Boards have been asked to establish a working arrangement for the management, coordination and provision of occupational health services to General Practitioners (GPs).
The service is available for GPs only; to include all partners, salaried GPs and any other GP employed directly by your practice. The service will not be accessible to other staff employed by your practice.
Service provision will include advice on wellbeing, attendance management and ill health retirement but will not include pre-placement screening, health surveillance and inoculation injuries.
The Health Board will aim to provide appropriate and timely occupational health services from the following three departments:
Nevill Hall Hospital, Abergavenny
Location: Cartrefle House (to the left of the Conference Centre)
Opening hours: 08.30am to 16.30pm Monday to Friday
Contact number: 01873 732849
Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr, Ystrad Mynach
Location: Level 3 (near stairwell 3)
Opening hours: 08.30am to 16.30pm Monday to Friday
Contact number: 01443 802442
St Woolos Hospital, Newport
Location Top floor B block (opposite chapel)
Opening hours 08.30am to 16.30pm Monday to Friday
Contact number 01633 238349
Should you require to use the service then you may self refer by contacting your nearest Occupational Health Department.
Any queries and bookings should be directed to the clerical staff at the relevant site.
From 1 April 2016 new information sharing processes between GPs and police have been introduced so that those licensed to possess firearm and shotgun certificates are medically fit.
The BMA has been involved from the outset in consulting on the new UK process alongside representatives from the Police, the shooting communities and other relevant parties.
BMA Guidance re Firearms Licencing
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
Additional funding has been given to the Wales Deanery to fund an increased number of GP Returner Scheme placements.
In addition funding has been agreed for a number of post CCT GP fellowships to be offered across Wales by the Wales Deanery.
Mycophenolate has been added to the list of approved DMARD drugs in the ABUHB Near Patient LES. Ina addition there has been clarification regarding patients who may be on 2 or more DMARD Drugs simultaneously.
"In the event that a patient is prescribed more than one Near Patient Testing drug practices must seek authorisation from the Deputy Medical Director in advance of claiming multiple reimbursement. Where authorisation has been granted practices can then claimfor each drug individually; they must clearly demonstrate the additional workload requiredfor each drug e.g. completely different tests at different frequencies. This must be clearly recorded within the patient record. The Primary Care Team will notify NWSSP as to each approval so that payments can be processed accordingly."
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