Description of the contract
Hywel Dda University Health board has awarded a tender requirement for provision of a Clinical GMS Correspondence Management service. The health board is seeking the support of change management professionals with well-established and proven techniques, skills and processes to engage and support our GP practices in moving correspondence management away from senior clinicians to well trained, skilled and confident members of the administrative team. Robust ongoing monitoring should be available to ensure appropriate and safe decisions are made for our patients.
Correspondence management involves administrative staff coding incoming clinical correspondence, taking actions where appropriate, including forwarding it to another member of the team, or passing the letter to a GP for action if a clinical decision is required. It is a more advanced task than document processing or coding alone. It requires administrative staff to be skilled and confident to make decisions about how to code a letter and its contents in the patient record, how to use an approved protocol for deciding which letters need to be sent to a GP and with what level of urgency, and when to ask for help. To do this effectively, staff require training and development of their skills and confidence.
The project aims are:
• To reduce the impact medical correspondence has on GP workload by diverting to other trained professionals.
• To provide reception and admin staff with the skills and confidence to effectively deal with correspondence on the GPs behalf, and ensure that it is reflected in the patients care.
• To identify and tackle issues in the flow of documents within the practice, implementing a new systematic approach to processing incoming clinical correspondence.
• To have a safe, efficient, and robust system to facilitate audit of the document processing.
• The training will help delegates understand the importance of accurate read coding and understanding medical terminology.
The aim is to obtain a standardised approach to GMS correspondence management across the Hywel Dda University Health Board (HDdUHB) area. This will be taught through a training programme, with the successful provider developing the protocols to compliment the training they have delivered. The successful provider will be expected to deliver training and then follow up to ensure all participating practices are aware of how to implement the protocols and utilise the skills of those trained.
The processing of clinical correspondence is required in a timely, safe and efficient manner, ensuring that medical records are up to date, by a suitably trained professional.
All nominated administrative staff in the practice will be given this additional training and relevant protocols in order to support the GP in clinical administration tasks. All incoming correspondence about patients from hospitals and other sources will then be processed by a member of the administrative team, releasing GP time.
Staff will require training to effectively look for what is required in a clinical letter, and code it appropriately. Reception and admin staff need to be skilled and confident in ascertaining patient need and appropriate action to be taken from this.
Working against the standard protocols developed in-house and refined through continuous improvement, each letter / email (or other electronic notifications) needs to be read and actioned. The appropriately trained member of the team reads the letter, enters details into the patient’s record and takes appropriate follow-on action, and identifying any duplication. In some cases, this involves other members of the team, or booking the patient an appointment. Letters that require urgent action will be passed onto the GP.
The successful provider will give access to remote technical and implementation Support via a helpdesk, Monday to Friday.
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