Barnet LMC newsletter – April 2025

Barnet LMC Newsletter April 2025

Over the past 12 months Barnet Local Medical Committee (LMC) has been working hard on behalf of general practice in Barnet to:

• Raise practice concerns regarding the implementation of Long-Term Conditions Locally Commissioned Services (LTCs LCSs) and to ensure that Barnet specific issues (frailty and housebound patients) are included in the LTCs LCSs risk stratification and therefore that the work receives appropriate recognition.
• Advocate for Barnet specific LCSs, as well as monitoring the development of NCL wide LCSs and their impact on GPs and practice staff in the borough, their workload and patient care. We have been involved in work which has resulted in a recurrent uplift of 7.2% for all NCL Locally Commissioned Services.
• Highlight, challenge and focus on reducing un-resourced workload shift from secondary care. We have been attending the Royal Free clinical interface group to improve working with our secondary care colleagues. We also wrote a letter to the ICB (alongside the Chairs of the other NCL LMCs) to express our concerns about the primary/secondary care interface and to lobby for trusts to implement the NCL Consensus document.
• Engage with the ICB, local GPs, PCN Clinical Directors, PCN Business Managers, GPPA borough representatives, Barnet Practice Managers Forum and Barnet Patient Representative Groups, to represent the need for better funding and resourcing of general practice.

Our current priorities include:

• • Secondary care workload dumping/implementation of the Primary/Secondary Care Consensus Document.
  • Safe working for practices and patients Safe working in general practice toolkit.
    • Did you know, performing PSA checks or providing zoladex injections for endometriosis is an enhanced service? These are enhanced services, and we are seeking extra funding and resources for providing these services.
    • Also did you know that CLCH and mental health services can refer to themselves internally and should not be asking us to action these referrals?
  • Practice finance -adequate funding and resources for the Long-Term Conditions Locally Commissioned Services & Barnet specific Locally Commissioned Services (LCSs).
  • Engaging with grassroot GPs/PCN CDs and Barnet Patient Group to hear about the challenges they are facing on the ground and feeding that information back to the LMC.

• Engaging with our local MPs to discuss local and national issues of concern to Barnet practices. On 21 March, we (Barnet LMC Chair and Vice Chair) met with Dan Tomlinson (Labour MP for Chipping Barnet) at Old Court House Surgery. Our discussions focused on:
  • The workforce challenges and retention issues amongst trainees – we were joined by an ST3 GP trainee who mentioned many of his colleagues thinking seriously about going abroad.
  • Infrastructure and lack of investment in estates and digital tools to facilitate our work.
  • GP contract and GPCE’s recent agreement – we pointed out the need for a substantive new contract with funding for core general practice going up in real terms (10-11% or more of total NHS budget vs 5-6% in current years).
  • NHSE migration with DHSC – we highlighted the importance of local input from our ICB team as more cuts may be detrimental to our local ability to guide things.

On 28 March, our LMC Chair met with Sarah Sackman (Labour MP for Finchley and Golders Green), to discuss the current working environment and what can be delivered safely in general practice within the available resources.

NFLT – community services single point of access (SPA) pilot
LMC Chairs and Vice-Chairs have continued their work with trust colleagues as part of an ongoing series of mental health interface meetings. On Monday 24 March an update was provided about the Community Services Single Point of Access pilot which will be taking place from the beginning of April. If you have any comments or queries regarding the pilot, please contact [email protected] so that we can raise these in our discussions with the mental health team.

Barnet LMC elections 2025
This spring is your opportunity to stand for Barnet LMC. Please watch our short animation explaining why should you stand for your local medical committee, which is part of our regularly updated elections page. You can also share the animation and a short message via WhatsApp. If you would like to find out more about being a member, we are running two lunchtime awareness sessions on either Wednesday 7 or 21 May 2025 you can register for these via [email protected].

Nomination packs will be sent out via email at the end of April. If you do not receive regular emails from us, think your details need updating, or you know of any GPs who may not be receiving our updates, whether they are a partner, employed, locum, new entrant or a trainee GP, contact us on [email protected]. The minimum data we require for each GP is the area/borough of London you work in, the name of the practice(s) you are currently working at, your GMC number and a current email address. For more information on how we handle your data, please see our privacy notice.

Secondary care GP liaison contacts
You can write to the following GP Liaison officers to raise any issues/queries relating secondary care:

• Royal Free Hospital: [email protected]
• University College Hospital: [email protected]
• Whittington Hospital: [email protected]
• North Middlesex University Hospital: [email protected]

Quality alerts
If you are experiencing any persistent issues relating to a secondary care service or an issue affecting your ability to deliver a high quality service, you should send a Quality Alert to Helen Brisbane.

We want to hear from you
We are here for all our GPs, principals, salaried, as well as locum GPs and those colleagues working in non-traditional GP roles. Your feedback and concerns are invaluable to us, so please reach out and tell us about any issues or queries, local borough as well as national by emailing [email protected].

LW LMC’s GP Support Team
The Team provides expert, confidential and bespoke advice and support to individual constituent sessional GPs, GP principals and practices in difficulty. You can contact the team via email at [email protected].

Your Barnet LMC representatives are:

• Dr Claire Braham, Freelance/ sessional
• Dr Hayley Dawson, Oak Lodge Medical Centre/ PCN1D (principal)
• Dr Swati Dholakia, Wentworth Medical Practice/PCN3 (principal)
• Dr Martin Harris, Temple Fortune Medical Practice/ PCN6 (principal)
• Dr Oge Ilozue, Brunswick Park Medical Practice/ PCN2 (principal)
• Dr Joanna Ish-Horowicz, Temple Fortune Medical Group/PCN6 (salaried)
• Dr Malinga Ratwatte, East Barnet Health Centre/ PCN2 (salaried)
• Dr Raymond Sacks, Oakleigh Road Clinic/ PCN2 (principal)
• Dr Jacqueline Santhouse Watling Medical Centre/ PCN3 (principal)
• Dr Tilna Tilakkumar, Freelance/Sessional
• Dr Farzana Vanat, PHGH Doctors/ PCN6 (sessional)
• Dr Lukshika Thavarajah, (VTS rep)
• Ms Tanya Brazza, Speedwell Practice/PCN2 (Practice Nurse rep)
• Ms Sanja Todorovic, Watling Medical Centre/PCN1W (Practice Manager rep)