Primary care latest updates

We are pleased to introduce the NHS Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board Five-Year Joint Forward Plan.

As an integrated care system of health and care partners, we have a shared vision to work better together to make Northamptonshire a place where people are active, confident and empowered to take responsibility for good health and wellbeing, with quality integrated support and services available for them when they need help.

As part of this NHS Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board (ICB) is striving to achieve four aims: to improve outcomes in population health and healthcare; to tackle inequalities in outcomes, experience and access; to enhance productivity and value for money; and to help the NHS support broader social and economic development.

Like many areas across the country, we are seeking to do this within a challenging economic and financial context, while we also face significant continuing demand for all our services. We know that through shared working and community involvement, we have the best opportunity to respond to these challenges.

Our ICB Plan links directly with the Northamptonshire Integrated Care Partnership ‘Live Your Best Life’ Strategy, published earlier in 2023, and also with the Health and Wellbeing Board Strategies for North and West Northamptonshire.

The plan explains how we will help deliver many of the ambitions outlined in the ICP Live Your Best Life Strategy, while rising to the challenges the NHS faces across the country.

It is just the start of a process of working together as health, care and public sector organisations, and with the communities we serve, to achieve our shared vision.

The plan is the first publication of a five-year plan which we will review, engage upon and develop on an annual basis throughout that period.

In doing this it is critical that we listen to our county’s communities and ensure their voices are heard as we continue to develop the activity set out in the ICB Plan.

We will engage with a wide range of communities, audiences and stakeholders to co-produce our activity during the ICB Plan period, guided by the principles set out in our ICN Community Engagement Framework 2022-25 [pdf] 519KB. 

This robust plan of engagement will be ongoing to make sure meaningful conversations take place on what matters most to our communities – engaging with our communities and those with lived experience will support us to better understand services and support them.

Alongside this, we will develop action plans to drive delivery and measure our success through agreed outcomes, metrics and key performance indicators. These will be working plans which continue to evolve and are kept under review.

Download the NHS Northamptonshire ICB Five-Year Joint Forward Plan 2023-28[pdf] 8MB

Read ICB Five-Year Joint Forward Plan now published…

Welcome to the June 2023 edition of ICN Today, Integrated Care Northamptonshire's e-newsletter for health and care colleagues, stakeholders and the wider community.

In another bumper edition of ICN Today we're delighted to unveil the brand new NHS Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board Five-Year Joint Forward Plan, and bring you exciting news of the launch of two new Community Diagnostics Centres to bring diagnostic testing closer to people's homes in our county.

We're also getting ready to kick off this year's ICN Virtual Wellbeing Festival on Monday 3 July – a week-long extravaganza of entertaining, informative and inspiring activities, all delivered online and completely free of charge for health and care colleagues.

Also in this edition, find out which of our county's NHS chief executives has been awarded the CBE in the King's Birthday Honours, learn more about an innovative new mental health crisis response service now live in Northamptonshire, celebrate the NHS's 75th birthday with us... and much more.

Read the June 2023 edition of ICN Today.

Do you want future editions emailed directly to your inbox?  Become an ICN Today subscriber .

Read June edition of ICN Today newsletter now published…

Tuesday 27 June 2023 saw the official launch of the Northamptonshire Anchor Institutions Network, bringing together organisations who have a significant impact in the county to work together to address important social and economic inequalities to make Northamptonshire a great place for people to live, work and visit.  

It is only by working together with shared commitment and priorities, that we can achieve a great impact which has been endorsed by anchor institutions network members at Yesterday’s official launch event and commitment of pledges. The Network will work together to seek best practice, measure impact, hold each other to account and actively commit to the following:

• Empowering the next generation
• Employment opportunities
• Social value gained from local investment
• Enhancing sustainability

This is an exciting step forward for Northamptonshire, bringing together public and private sector organisations in a new way of working towards one shared goal. Together, the Network will work towards improving the wellbeing and create strong, safe, resilient, and inclusive communities for our residents.

Dr Jamie Green (Northamptonshire IBC Anchor Institutions representative) said:

"Being part of the Northamptonshire Anchor Institutions Network, will allow for increased collaboration across our country for the benefit of our population. It builds on existing relationships as well as provides opportunities for new partners and ideas. There is an exciting buzz about what we can achieve together, and the focus on empowering the next generation is already demonstrating collaborative opportunities, such as healthcare apprenticeships for young care leavers"

The Network will meet regularly in person to discuss and set out actions to address their agreed priorities, current members include: West Northamptonshire Council, North Northamptonshire Council, Northamptonshire Children Trust, Northamptonshire Community Foundation, Northampton Hospital Group, Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust, Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board, St Andrews Healthcare, Police, Fire, Police Fire and Crime Commissioner, University of Northampton, Northampton College, Tresham College, Moulton College, Voluntary Impact Northamptonshire, NNBN, Barclays, Northamptonshire Chamber, Northamptonshire County Association of Local Councils, Saints Foundation, Northampton Town Football Club Community Foundation.

As this Network progresses, we will share updates with you. For more information or if you are interested in joining please contact sadie.beishon@westnorthants.gov.uk.

Read Northamptonshire ICB joins the Northamptonshire Anchor Institutions Network…

Thousands of local people who need diagnostic tests like MRI, CT, and ultrasound scans, are set to benefit from two new Community Diagnostic Centres (CDCs) planned for Northamptonshire.

Earlier this year the Government announced multi-million-pound plans for new CDCs across the country* to help tackle diagnostic waiting time backlogs and speed-up vital care for patients.

Northamptonshire is set to receive nearly £17m in funding** to establish two CDCs – one in Corby and one in Kings Heath, Northampton.

The aim is to get both CDCs up and running by early 2024 and in the meantime additional tests are being done through mobile units to start to impact on waiting times for routine tests.

The CDCs in Northamptonshire will be run by the University Hospitals of Northamptonshire NHS Group – which is a hospital group formed of Kettering and Northampton general hospitals.

The work will be overseen by NHS Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board – which is responsible for health and social care in Northamptonshire – and has involved other partners***. 

Director of Strategy for the University Hospitals of Northamptonshire NHS Group, Polly Grimmett, said: “We are delighted that the bids to establish two CDCs in Northamptonshire have been successful and this will be very good news for patients who need diagnostic tests.

“The new facilities will be additional to the diagnostic testing currently done within Kettering and Northampton general hospitals and in some of our other community sites.

“At the moment, like most acute hospitals in the country, our two hospitals are working very hard to address waiting times for diagnostic tests.

“Our staff are putting on extra clinics, some of them at weekends, and we are also using extra capacity provided by specialist companies to help us reduce waiting times for routine tests.

“While it is important to remember that urgent tests for patients with suspected cancer or other serious conditions have been undertaken throughout the Covid-19 pandemic – the new CDCs will help us to make significant impacts in the waits for routine tests and scans.

“The CDC will operate for 12 hours a day and for seven-days-a-week. The additional appointments will help support GPs and hospital staff in diagnosing many potentially life-threatening, or debilitating conditions, at an earlier point. In turn this will help us treat conditions and reduce the risk of emergency attendances in hospital.

“It will also help us to reduce the stress and uncertainty patients face while waiting for the more specialised diagnostic tests like CT and MRI to determine what is wrong with them.”

Toby Sanders, Chief Executive of Northamptonshire Integrated Care Board, said: “We are delighted the county’s bid for CDCs has been supported.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a very significant impact on NHS services making it harder for hospitals, and other health services, to keep up with the growing demand for tests.

“In addition, Northamptonshire is one of the fastest growing counties in England so – even without the Covid-19 pandemic – investing in diagnostic test capacity would have been a key priority for us.

“These new centres will be an exciting new way of providing diagnostic tests to our local community closer to their homes. They will speed-up people’s access to tests and play a very important part in the treatment of many medical and surgical conditions.”

The Corby CDC is to be based at Willowbrook Health Centre site, Cottingham Road and will include:

• Key scanning technologies include CT, MRI, with increased appointment times for the existing Ultrasound and Plain X-Ray
• Physiological measures including Echocardiography, and more appointments for blood tests.

The Kings Heath CDC will use some of the existing health centre, with facilities extended as needed. It will deliver all the same tests as those at Corby except for x-ray. The Trust is investigating how it can further develop other forms of testing at this location.

It is expected that the two new CDCs, once fully operational, will be able to deliver at least 90,000 additional tests each year including 16,000 additional MRI scans and 24,000 additional CT scans.

The NHS standard for diagnostic waiting times is six weeks but now waiting times for routine non-urgent specialist tests such as MRI and CT in Northamptonshire can be up to 20 weeks for MRI and 13 weeks for CT, with shorter waits for other tests. 

It is hoped that the new CDCs – along with continued investment, upgrades, and maintenance in existing equipment and diagnostic resources – will start to rapidly reduce waiting times for these procedures.

The aim – in line with a national NHS ambition – is to have 95% of patents waiting no more than 6 weeks for a diagnostic test by end of March 2025 with many simple tests performed in much less than that.

For Northamptonshire we aim to initially get down 85% of patients being seen within 6 weeks by end of March 2024.

 

* The national Community Diagnostic Centre programme. There is a national target to deliver 44 CDCs of which 8 of these will be across the Midlands. A national capital investment of £146m is to be distributed to regions on a weighted population basis.

** The allocation for Northamptonshire of £16.64m will support the initiative over three years.

*** Other local partners involved with agreeing the plans for these CDCs included GPs, local authorities, and Chief Executives from North Northamptonshire Carers and Connected Together.  Full support was also given by NHS England Cancer Alliance.

Read New Community Diagnostic Centres set to support thousands of patients…

Shared on behalf of Qurat Haider at Grand Union CMHT:

Dear colleagues,

Thank you for your help in looking after women suffering with mental health difficulties during their perinatal period. As a perinatal service we truly appreciate your support and look forward to working collaboratively with you and aim to improve access to personalised and better care for this client group.

As a service we have noticed how perinatal service users have benefitted from your care although recently we have also noticed that a good proportion of service users were being referred, after psychotropics were discontinued or patients were discouraged to use them whilst being pregnant or breast feeding. This most likely stemmed from worries about side effects caused by psychotropics to the baby. When psychotropics are discontinued or not commenced at the indicated time, in most cases this leads to a worsening of symptoms. This also meant that occasionally the service user had to battle a more treatment resistant illness, subsequent to the delay in initiation or the discontinuation of psychotropics.

The Perinatal mental health team in Northampton - Campbell House, would like to take this opportunity to share a couple of videos we have produced, with information regarding ‘Safety of using psychotropics during the perinatal period’. We hope you will find these helpful.

Here are the links to the videos we have worked on:

Intro: https://youtu.be/g4CEA0TE1VY

Antidepressant: https://youtu.be/komLfrqa4Wc

The aim of this service improvement project:

• Is not to ask or expect colleagues in the primary care services, to stop referring patients to a perinatal mental health team, or to ‘do our job’. It really is about sharing information regarding the safety of prescribing psychotropics and actually encouraging you to contact us when in doubt. We love talking about psychotropic use and their safety in a perinatal service user.
• Where indicated, to reduce the number of service users discontinuing psychotropic medication/s & improve initiation of psychotropics during the perinatal period in a primary care setting.

We appreciate that not all classes of psychotropics have been covered in the material shared. This is work in progress and the eventual aim is to continue working on it for a more comprehensive piece of work.

Read Safety of using psychotropics during the perinatal period…