Primary care latest updates

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…

In July, we will join celebrations nationwide to mark 75 years of the NHS – and we’re asking you to be a part of it. 

We’ll be sharing our NHS Stories, internally and externally, during NHS75 week (w/c 3 July).            

We’re inviting you to tell us about your NHS journey – via this MS Form – and it could be one of those we feature during the NHS75 celebrations. We want to celebrate your dedication, and inspire others to join us, and start their own NHS journey. So please take just a few minutes to fill in the survey!

How to get involved in NHS75

You can celebrate 75 years of the NHS – which takes place on 5 July – in your own unique way.

You can also share a photo or video of your team that ICB’s Communications Team could share on our own social media channels.

You could also encourage your patients to share their experiences of how the NHS has helped them in their own way.   

Perhaps you could organise a get together as part of the NHS Big Tea Party or put your best foot forward by taking part in the 5k parkrun for the NHS on Saturday 8 July or 2k junior parkrun on Sunday 9 July. You can even dress up for the occasion! Find your nearest parkrun here.

We will also be highlighting some of the amazing work happening at ICB on our channels, and celebrating recent successes whether it’s individual employees, teams, projects, or ICB as a whole.

It’s a fantastic opportunity to celebrate our continued work to provide outstanding care for our patients, as well as honour our amazing colleagues and volunteers.

Wellbeing Festival

The NHS75 celebrations coincide with the much-anticipated Northamptonshire Virtual Wellbeing Festival – a week-long programme of exciting online events, from 3-7 June, with no fewer than 41 entertaining, inspiring, and informative sessions, including six headline speakers plus a mix of live and recorded activities offering something for everyone. All Wellbeing Festival sessions will be available free on Microsoft Teams and the Festival website exclusively for Northamptonshire health and care colleagues.

Download your NHS75 Teams background

We created an NHS75 Teams background for you to download and use during the NHS birthday week. Download the PowerPoint here and save the image as a PNG or JPEG. You can then upload it to MS Teams.

How it all started

Since the NHS was founded on 5 July 1948, it has always innovated and adapted to meet to needs of each generation. 75 years on, the NHS’s founding principles remain as relevant today as they were then.

Despite the challenges, the public still overwhelmingly support having a national health service, and it is what makes our people most proud to be British.

As we mark 75 years of the NHS, it is a time to celebrate our past, but more importantly, a time to think about a future where we continue to put patients first.

We want to take this opportunity to thank all NHS staff, past and present, who have made the organisation what it is.

Join NHS75 events

To celebrate the birthday year, NHS England is promoting a series of NHS75 events:

• Saturday 1 July to Sunday 9 July – host an NHS Big Tea
• Wednesday 5 July – NHS birthday
  • Service for NHS staff, volunteers and partners at Westminster Abbey
• Thursday 6 July 2023 – George Cross tour commences
• Saturday 8 July – ‘parkrun for the NHS’
• Sunday 9 July – ‘parkrun for the NHS’ (juniors)

If you’re celebrating NHS75 please share your photos and videos with the Communication Team by emailing them to commsteam@nhft.nhs.uk.

‘Our NHS at 75’

The shortlist ‘Our NHS at 75’ national photo competition, in partnership with Fujifilm, has been announced. Earlier this year we asked colleagues to submit photos as part of the competition. Unfortunately, no-one from ICB has been shortlisted, however you can still see some of the striking images included here NHS England » Our NHS at 75 – Shortlist Announced.

Read more about NHS75 at www.england.nhs.uk/nhsbirthday.

Read Be a part of NHS75 and share your story…

We’re excited to announce that Integrated Care Northamptonshire (ICN) is going to be launching its own Digital Skills Academy.We now need your help to shape what it will offer and help us understand what amazing opportunities we could provide for colleagues to develop and enhance their data and digital skills.

Delivered in partnership with Multiverse and open to applications from anyone working in the NHS, health or social care in Northamptonshire, the ICN Digital Skills Academy will be launching this September.

Before we make decisions on the particular courses and skills that will be offered within the Digital Skills Academy, we first need to understand the current level of data and digital capabilities across partner organisations.

Integrated Care Northamptonshire is a partnership of our health and care organisations across the county. This includes our NHS, councils, primary care organisations and other charity, voluntary, community sector organisations and trust providers.

You can help us by completing this short survey, which should take about five to seven minutes for you to complete.

Complete the data skills survey now at https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/Northamptonshire Data Academy/

Once we have the results from the survey, Integrated Care Northamptonshire and Multiverse will be running a series of information sessions with managers and colleagues on how selected training programmes can give you the digital and data skills to excel in the workplace.

We’re on a journey to build a data and digital-first integrated care system in Northamptonshire, and the involvement of our colleagues is critical.

The deadline to complete the survey is Monday 10 July 2023, but please try to complete it as soon as possible.

If you have any questions please contact matthew.hutton3@nhs.net

Frequently asked questions

Who are Multiverse?

• Multiverse provides qualifications and training to existing staff within organisations that is funded via the apprenticeship levy. This means you’ll receive training and coaching in data and digital and learn how to apply those skills in your current job. You’ll finish the programme with an accredited qualification and in-demand skills.
• All training and practice will take place during working hours, so please bear this in mind when thinking about applying. Applications processes will include engagement with line managers in relation to the commitment required (three hours of training per week). We will engage with line managers to help them understand the value of training and support available via apprenticeship, with no cost to local training budgets.

Who can apply?

• If you are involved in any aspect of patient or citizen outcomes in Northamptonshire who wants to improve your digital skills and are contracted for at least 30 hours per week.
• Even if you are unsure if you are eligible, completing the survey will help us understand the current level of digital capabilities.

Why are we launching this?

• Empower you by giving you critical data and digital skills you can use in your role, so we can achieve our strategic objectives together
• Provide you with learning pathways to advance your career within the Integrated Care Northamptonshire health and care system
• Indirectly and directly improve patient and citizen outcomes by improving data and digital skills right across ICN

What’s in it for me?

• Gain new digital and data skills to future-proof your career and become more productive with your time. You will achieve a formal qualification whilst continuing to flourish in your role. You’ll be supported by a Multiverse coach, a mentor and gain access to exclusive networking opportunities.

 

Read Help us to design our new Integrated Care Northamptonshire Digital Skills Academy…

There’s now less than two weeks before the 2023 Northamptonshire Virtual Wellbeing Festival (VWBF23) kicks off on Monday 3 July.

And if you have any burning questions you’d like to ask of any of the six headline speakers, now’s your chance to let them know!

Our inspiring daily headliner line-up includes adventurer Debra Searle and body positivity activist Harnaam Kaur on Monday, former footballer Paul Merson on Tuesday, mind coach Vex King on Wednesday, BBC presenter Ayo Sokale on Thursday and style guru Gok Wan on Friday.

If there’s anything you’d like to ask any of them, you can submit your questions now by completing this short online form.

Alternatively, just visit the VWBF23 website at www.wellbeingfestival.live and go to the headliners page, where you can find out more about each speaker and click the ‘Submit a question’ button.

You can submit as many questions as you like either choose to do so anonymously or opt to have your name mentioned if your question is used. Please note that while we will endeavour to use as many questions as we can during each headliner session, it may not be possible to use all of them due to time limitations.

If you haven’t yet explored our full VWBF23 programme of 41 exciting live and recorded sessions, all delivered online and free of charge for health and care colleagues, find out how you can personalise your festival by adding any session to your calendar. The Festival coincides with national celebrations around the 75^th anniversary of the NHS, which takes place on Wednesday 5 July.

Don’t forget there’s still time to sign up for VWBF23 updates direct to your inbox – including a daily programme reminder during Festival week – if you register for updates now.

Read Submit your questions for our Virtual Wellbeing Festival headliners…