Dear colleagues,
We would like to wish all our colleagues in general practice across NCL, your family and friends a peaceful and restful festive break.
If you have received this newsletter from a colleague and would like to join our mailing list please contact joni.wilson-kaye@lmc.org.uk or click here.
Please see our latest round-up of how your LMC team is working for you across North Central London.
Londonwide LMCs guidance in focus
LFPSE – Learning from Patient Safety Events
As outlined in the September LMC newsletter on the 2025/26 GP contract changes, practices must register and maintain an account with LFPSE. This NHS England service replaces NRLS and STEIS and is used to:
- Record patient safety events
- Access data on reported events
LFPSE helps identify trends, improve reporting culture, and drive safety improvements. By using it, you not only meet statutory and policy requirements but also help other providers learn from the concerns you raise — strengthening patient safety across the system. This will help LMC to follow up your concerns with Interface issues.
Access the service:
- First-time users: click Set up an account to check if you need an NHS England Applications Account.
- Existing users: select Sign in.
- You can submit an event anonymously without signing in, but logging in allows you to save, review, and update incidents.
Read the full summary of contract changes here.
Quick wins for GPs to reduce SMS messaging
Encourage your patients:
- To provide an email address if you do not have one on file: sending via email is free and may be preferred for sending attachments or for less digital patients.
- To download the NHS App and turn ON the notification setting for the app. If a message is not read within the NHS App it will revert to being sent as an SMS text after 24 hours.
Before you send an SMS:
- Check patients’ numbers – an SMS sent to the wrong number is still charged.
- If you have practice or personal templates you use a lot, make them fragment-efficient and with shortened links – check your top templates with your SMS supplier.
More website and communication tips can be found here.
Latest updates and ongoing issues
West and North Central ICB Merger
The ICB issued a statement on 27 November to advise Frances O’Callaghan, who had been appointed as the Chief Executive for West and NCL ICB, will be taking up a new role in February at NHS Blood and Transplant. As a team we will be monitoring the situation and will update you when we have more information.
NCL mental health interface updates
At the December interface meeting, we had a detailed discussion with North London Foundation Trust about the continuing issues caused by the backlog in ADHD referrals including:
- Massive amounts of money being spent on the Right to Choose (RTC), the NHS service get hugely less per patient – if that money came back into the NHS they could run a proper service.
- GPs with Extended Roles (GPwER) was also discussed as an option.
- Some support to be available while patients are on waiting list but the budget for this will only cover a fraction of those waiting.
- Currently the trust is seeing those referred 3 years ago although this number is increasing as more patients are referred the list is growing and someone referred today is likely to wait much longer.
- ICB are no longer going to produce a list of ‘approved’ ADHD providers.
- Difficulty for GPs of assessing the quality of ADHD assessments for RTC providers.
- NLFT will undertake a review annually if practice says that is the only condition under which they will share care.
North Central London LMCs Strategic Leadership Network (SLN)
At our SLN in November we met with colleagues from the Local Optical Committee (LOC) to discuss ophthalmology pathways including minor eye conditions (MECS). Discussions included the difficulties practices encounter when opticians send patients to their GP requesting onward referrals or for over the counter (OTC) medication.
We will be following this initial discussion in the new year with colleagues from the LOC. Dr Tom Spary (Vice-Chair of Haringey LMC and member of the SLN) is in the process of writing guidance for opticians in NCL including the requirements on practices to reduce the prescribing of OTC medication. If you are experiencing difficulties with community opticians, please contact: joni.wilson-kaye@lmc.org.uk so that we can raise concerns in our meeting in the new year.
Other topics of focus at the SLN included:
- Primary Care Patient Safety Strategy (PSIRF) – see Londonwide guidance at the top of this newsletter.
- Interface issues including problems encountered by practices as a result of secondary care prescribing and gaps in community services.
New GP Alert pathway coming soon
Following a year-long project to review and standardise GP liaison services across NCL we will be launching a new streamlined pathway for GPs to submit feedback/concerns to providers next spring.
Instead of sending emails to GP liaison teams or submitting a Quality Alert (where Patient Identifiable Data is sent separately), there will be one new GP Feedback & Alert pathway. Any concerns will be submitted using an EMIS form which is quick and easy to complete. It will also pull through patients’ details and save directly to their clinical record. GPs will have three choices for feeding back concerns:
- send an email directly to a clinical service (this will be via GP liaison if the email address is not available)
- to submit an alert for more serious clinical concerns
- to submit a patient safety event (see national definitions).
The new GP Feedback & Alert pathway will replace both Quality Alerts and the use of GP liaison teams (who are non-clinical) to raise clinical issues about single patients. The submission process will be automated as much as possible to reduce the workload for GPs.
The project also identified multiple challenges with the current pathways, including a lack of clinical governance or internal escalation within the trusts and variable quality, slow or no response.
The rollout of the new agreed internal escalation processes within each trust will mean that any lack of response to either direct feedback to the service or raising an alert within 6 weeks is then escalated directly to the relevant medical director, the trust risk & safety teams and the ICB. This should result in earlier responses to GP reporters.
The pathway will be tested over the next few weeks, and more details will follow in January.
The Londonwide LMC NCL Sector Team
You can find the details of your LMC Chairs across NCL here. If you have any specific concerns arising about this or any other issue, please contact us via joni.wilson-kaye@lmc.org.uk.
Best wishes,
The NCL Londonwide LMCs team:
Jamie Wright, Director Primary Care,
Vicky Weeks, Medical Director,
Joni Wilson-Kaye, Assistant Director Primary Care – joni.wilson-kaye@lmc.org.uk ,
Sarah Ocran, Committee Liaison Executive – sarah.ocran@lmc.org.uk