Care plans review

Please note that participation in the  Review of Care Plans across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland is NOT compulsory.

Practice Managers and lead GPs in West Leicestershire will have received an email dated 29th December 2014 sent with 'High Importance' from Mel Burdett, which asks for practices to send examples of Care Plans for possible inclusion in a review/audit.

We appreciate the non-recurrent nature of the funding of this work, which has a tight schedule, so I can understand why your LMC were overlooked during planning and communications. Our chief executive, Dr Chris Hewitt, has spoken with Emma-Jane Roberts, Head of Implementation at Leicester City CCG, and I now have a clearer understanding of the project and gained some assurances and clarification, particularly around the reason for the tight turnaround time.

The project has good intentions and may produce some valuable learning and areas to focus future training. So we are keen to support it, and we have suggested the scheme may be more successful if it recruits and reimburses 'volunteer practices' who would each need to receive more details about the objectives, requirements and implications.

At a time when practices are so busy dealing with winter pressures, we appreciate many will not have time to comply with this request - which is NOT a contractual obligation.

Summary

Please do not submit care plans as requested but wait for a new and more detailed email communication (which will be sent to practices in all three CCGs in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland). As a practice you should then be in a position to consider whether or not to participate. Your LMC has requested the project makes appropriate honoraria payments to volunteer practices. We advise that practices consider having a positive approach to participating in this project IF staff and clinical time can be made available to select, print and anonymise care plans, IF you are satisfied with assurances of practice confidentiality and handling of the data and IF appropriate backfill payments are offered.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you wish to clarify anything.