What are they?
The NHS Health Check programme aims to help prevent heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and kidney disease.
Everyone between the ages of 40 and 74, who has not already been diagnosed with one of these conditions, will be invited (once every five years) to have a check to assess their risk of developing a vascular disease and will be given support and advice to help them reduce or manage that risk.
GP practices are being invited to sign up to the NHS Health Checks Local Enhanced Service now.
Delivery
NHS Health Checks is a nationally mandated five year rolling programme which must be fully up and running by 2012/13. This means that all 40 to 74 year olds not on existing vascular disease registers must be identified and offered an NHS Health Check across a five year rolling programme.
The Department of Health has allowed for PCTs to determine the most appropriate model of service delivery.
In the first instance, this service is being offered to every general practice. This is due to the cohort identification requirements, information governance and to ensure that primary care is able to manage the demands for services resulting from this programme better than if we commissioned an alternative model of delivery.
All of the emerging GP Commissioning Consortia in conjunction with the PCT strongly encourage all practices to sign up to this service.
In both 09/10 and 10/11 the PCT had ambitious plans for this programme but in both years the programme was unable to be launched. Therefore, NHS South East Coast has set the PCT/eGPCC a challenging activity delivery target which must be formally reported quarterly.
We need your support please.
Ideally we need every practice to provide this service. Where practices feel unable to take up this enhanced service, the eGPCC in collaboration with the PCT will have to determine how best we can commission in order to comply with our statutory responsibilities.
2011/12 offers us the opportunity to establish this programme across primary care in preparation for 2012/13.
You were sent the service specification on 3 May 2011.
How practices will be supported
This service is supported by:
The PCT will hold a series of free training sessions across 2011/12. These will be delivered as locally as possible and aligned to the pace of practice sign up.
The training will consist of:
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Overview of NHS Health Checks
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Application/establishment of practice service set up (to support practices)
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Motivational Interviewing (to encourage/facilitate behaviour change)
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Point of Care Testing for cholesterol
Due to the universal nature of this programme across eastern and coastal Kent, we are in the process of recruiting a project manager to support full implementation.
The project manager is responsible for:
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the successful implementation of the programme across eastern and coastal Kent
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will be your central point of contact for all queries relating to this programme in order to reduce barriers to practice sign up and service implementation
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manage the backroom function and systems across all directorates in the PCT (communications, information, commissioning, contracting, finance)
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co-ordinate the training programme.
Please review the enhanced service specification and contact the PCT for further information.
Further information
All enquiries about the programme should be made in the first instance via the enhanced service email account enhancedservices@nhs.net
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