The practice is changing how it reviews patients with long term conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease or asthma. We are going to streamline the process which will result in patients being asked to attend a fewer number of appointments.
From April onwards we are now going to review patients according to their month of birth. For example -if your month of birth is April you will receive an invite from the practice to attend for a Long term condition review in that month. Usually this will mean an appointment with a member of our nursing team who will review all of your long term conditions in one appointment (a general review appointment). If you have a respiratory condition such as Asthma or COPD you will be asked to make a second, separate appointment with the nursing team to review this. After these appointments are completed, you will then get a medication review. Often this can be completed without the need for an appointment however if the clinical team feel that your medications need to change or that your condition is not well controlled you may be asked to make an appointment with either our Clinical pharmacist or a GP to discuss this further.
We are also going to use more online services to help with this. You may be sent an SMS message asking you to complete an online questionnaire to help with your review. If you have the Airmid app you may also be able to complete questions through this app. This information helps the nurses know if you are having any particular problems ahead of your review appointment.
This should streamline our long term condition review process and by doing it in your month of birth we are hoping it makes it easier for you to remember when your review will be due. It should also mean that patients with multiple long term conditions are not asked to make as many appointments as they were in past. We hope that patients will find this more convenient.
In the first year of this process, it may mean that some patients will be getting their review shortly after already having a review, and for others there will be a slightly longer gap before their review will happen. This will even out by next year. As with any new service there may be some unforeseen problems so, please bear with us all as we adapt to it.