Important Londonwide CEO message number 16 - 28 July 2009
Short and sweet today. Four essential things to cover:
- Sickness Certificates beyond 7 day SSP period – Michelle’s 3 Step Advice
- Antiviral Collection Point Nonsenses
- Londonwide LMCs Practice Flu Workload Survey
- We’ve designed new posters to help your practice
Have a better week.
- Sickness Certificates beyond the 7 day SSP period – Michelle’s 3 Step Advice
There is no point in refusing medical certificate requests when the government has clearly lost its senses over what is and isn’t best practice clinically. My 3 –Step advice is to use your usual judgement and if you believe the patient is not ‘swinging the lead’,
STEP ONE - Issue a MED 5, and under B, cross out the printed words, and insert the words:
“In the current pandemic flu situation based on what the patient tells me”
STEP TWO - Under diagnosis insert the words:
“Presumed Swine Flu”
STEP THREE - Document in your own records any 3rd party references the patient may have had, or any phone contacts with the practice.
Please note this is not the same as my cunning plan certificate for fitness, attached to my last message (15). - Antiviral Collection Point Nonsenses
If you believe that universal prescribing of Tamiflu is a good thing, then you’ll be disappointed that some centres appear to be open Monday to Friday. Ditto cross-border issues like being sent away from your nearest collection point as it comes under a different PCT.
If like me you believe it’s a wholly over the top political reaction designed to distance responsibility from politicians, and has no resonance with the pressure on us not to prescribe antibiotics for common colds, then you may feel there is a god.
Either way, our patients should not be driven to exasperation and confusion by this madness, and I’ll try and get some commonsense injected into the process. - Londonwide LMCs Practice Flu Workload Survey
Please, please, please take a couple of minutes to complete OUR online survey which we need to help us help you. We will of course use the informal data we collect to make the best case for you and your hard pressed teams in our dealings with the GPC, the PCTs and the Media. - We’ve designed new posters to help your practice
New Londonwide LMCs swine flu posters are now available to download. These materials include a poster regarding flu certificates and an updated general information poster about the virus. Please use the materials you feel appropriate to your practice.
I hope you find them useful.