Carers Project
We are working across all seven practices in our PCN to identify unpaid Carers.
These are people who care for a friend or family member due to their illness, disability, mental health issue or a substance misuse problem but are not paid to do it.
Sometimes these Carers are only children.
We are working to get all unpaid Carers identified by the practices. This is usually done by the filling out of a Yellow Card, which means we add a code to the Carers record so we can identify you.
The Yellow Card is then sent off to Carers Leeds and the Carer can be contacted by Carers Leeds if they wish to access more support.
If we know you are a Carer then we can make sure you get invited for your annual flu vaccination, we can try and make sure that if the person you care for has an appointment at the Surgery then you can have one at the same time if you need one.
We will also be offering all Carers an Annual Health Check, just to make sure that your health is good, and you are doing ok in other areas of your life. At this appointment we can refer you on for extra support if you need it.
We can also signpost you to groups in the area, and to websites that you may find helpful.
The pharmacy team is reviewing patients who are taking blood-thinning medication for an irregular heart beat (Atrial fibrillation) such as Rivaroxaban, Dabigatran and Apixaban to see if it is appropriate for them to switch to Edoxaban.
Edoxaban has been recommended by the NHS as the most cost-effective drug of this type, and most new patients with an irregular heart beat will be started on this drug.
This will help us to ensure that the money available to spend on medicines is being used appropriately and we can treat more people to prevent strokes.
Video Group Clinics are currently being developed by the PCN Health & Wellbeing Coach and PCN Care Coordinators in conjunction with Clinical staff at Garforth Medical Centre. These are due to be launched in Autumn 2022 for patients with the Menopause initially with Garforth Medical Centre being the Pilot Practice. This is a new service which will ultimately be rolled out to the rest of the PCN and could be used with other patient groups for example Type 2 diabetes.
See this short animation for information about the benefits of Video Group Clinics and how they differ from individual patient appointments.
For more information about how Video Group Clinics are developed please see this video.