New contractual requirements came into force from 1 April 2014 requiring that GP Practices should make available a “statement of intent” in relation to the following IT developments:

• Summary Care Record (SCR)
• GP to GP Record Transfers (GP2GP)
• Patient Online Access to their GP medical record

The same contractual obligations require that we have a “statement of intent” regarding these developments in place and publicised by 30 September 2014.

Please find below details of the practice’s stance with regards to these points:-

NHS England require practices to enable successful automated uploads of any changes to patient’s summary information, at least on a daily basis, to the summary care record (SCR) or have published plans in place to achieve this by 31st of March 2015.

Having your Summary Care Record (SCR) available will help anyone treating you without your full medical record. They will have access to information about any medication you may be taking and any drugs that you have a recorded allergy or sensitivity to. Of course if you do not want your medical records to be available in this way then you will need to let us know so that we can update your record.

Reeth Medical Centre can confirm that your SCR is automatically updated on at least a daily basis to ensure that your information is as up to date as it can possibly be.

NHS England requires practices to utilise the GP2GP facility for the transfer of patient records between practices, when a patient registers or de-registers (this does not apply to temporary patient registrations).

It is very important that you are registered with a doctor at all times. If you leave your previous practice and register with a new GP, your medical records will be removed from your previous doctor and forwarded on to your new GP via NHS England. It can take up to 2 weeks for your paper records to reach your new surgery. However, GP2GP record transfers your electronic medical record is transferred to your new practice much sooner.

Reeth Medical Centre confirms that GP2GP transfers will be active by the 31st March 2015, enabling the practice to send and receive patient records via this system.

NHS England require practices to promote and offer the facility to enable patients online access to appointments, prescriptions, allergies and adverse reactions or have published plans in place to achieve this by 31st of March 2015.

We currently offer the facility for booking and cancelling appointments and also for ordering your repeat prescriptions on-line. This is done by the clinical system on-line facility. If you do not already have a user name and password for this system – please register for on-line access at the surgery.

From 01 April 2015 all patients on the practice list, including children, have a named, accountable GP. This GP is responsible for co-ordination of all appropriate services required under the NHS contract and for ensuring that these are delivered to each of their patients where required.

This does not mean that the named GP has 24-hour responsibility for patients or personal availability throughout the working week. Patients are free to choose to see any GP within the practice in line with current arrangements.

The practice is a member of the Upper Dales Area Partnership (UDAP) and as such uses this organisation as its patient participation group. The UDAP gathers representatives from all aspects of life in the Dales, including education, Police, local councillors and the meetings are open to any member of the public to attend and contribute. We feel this type of forum is much more inclusive and offers a wide range of perspectives as well as collaborative working across different sectors affecting Dales life.

 

Dates of the meetings and minutes are published on the Richmondshire District Council Website.

NHS England require that the net earnings of doctors engaged in the practice is publicised, and the required disclosure is shown below. However it should be noted that the prescribed method for calculating earnings is potentially misleading because it takes no account of how much time doctors spend working in the practice, and should not be used to form any judgement about GP earnings, nor to make any comparison with any other practice.

The average pay for GPs working in Reeth Medical Centre in the last financial year is £36 692 before tax and National Insurance. This is for 1 full time GP and 1 part-time GP who worked in the practice for more than six months.