Long-term condition management system

Posted on June 21st, 2024

Patient safety is our first and foremost priority as a Practice. The management of long-term conditions (LTC) is a crucial part of this – ensuring that our patients remain as healthy as possible for as long as possible.

We are also aware of the demand that long-term condition reviews put on the practice – both in terms of the number of appointments, but also time spent getting patients in and receiving calls from patients to book these.

We have therefore decided to overhaul our LTC recall system in term of how we gather information, which Clinicians you will be seeing and any potential follow up from this.

Here’s a summary of some of the things that you may notice as patients:

Questionnaires – We will be sending out questionnaires via SMS prior to your long-term condition review and we would very much appreciate if you could fill these before your appointment as it will free up valuable nursing team time. If you are unable to complete these then please do not worry as our fantastic team will have the time to cover this with you in your face to face appointment instead but if you can, please do, it really helps them.

Number of appointments – For some conditions it may be that your condition is so well controlled that you do not need an appointment with a Practice Nurse like you would have done previously (for example if you have asthma or diabetes that is well controlled). If when we review your test results this indicates an appointment is necessary then we will get in touch with you to arrange a review with a Practice Nurse

Remote booking – We will be increasingly opening up the ability to book appointments remotely without needing to phone our Reception team

We are very hopeful from the initial data that this should lead to an improvement across the board for all patients whilst also freeing up valuable nursing time for those patients most in need. Please bear with us and trust us during this change. If you have any queries then do please let us know.

Thanks in advance for your co-operation during this change.