11.5.20 Orthopaedic Choice update
News
As you are aware NHS England wrote to CCGs, Community Health Providers and other agencies setting out our providers could release capacity to support the Covid19 preparedness and response through prioritisation/segmentation of services including routine Musculoskeletal (MSK) provision and redeployment of staff across the local health system indicating these temporary changes would be in place until 31 July 2020 unless otherwise advised. During this period only urgent referrals have been triaged in line with the published guidance.
On 29 April 2020 Simon Stevens and Amanda Pritchard from NHSE/NHSI sent a further letter outlining the NHS 2nd phase response to Covid19 and this including developing plans for non-urgent elective care. West Hampshire CCG and Southern Health Orthopaedic Choice teams have been working together and are pleased to be able to confirm updated working arrangements commencing Tuesday 12 May 2020;
- On-line education and exercise prescription guidelines continue to be available to GPs to enable people to self-manage and the service will continue to expand upon this. 22.5.20 amendment – to access these guidelines, videos and exercises, click on this link : https://www.csp.org.uk/public-patient/rehabilitation-exercises
- Orthopaedic Choice will be ready to fully accept all referrals into the service from Tuesday 12 May 2020 and that all practices signed up to the Referral Support Service should refer through to the service WHCCG Referral Support Service Orthopaedics (11A) (found through ‘search Primary Care’ on E-referrals) and kindly request as much clinically relevant information including BMI, smoking status, medical history and treatments is provided on referrals
- Urgent referrals will be prioritised and all contact with patients will be via phone and/or video calls
- Referrals will be triaged and a number of routine referrals may need to be put on hold as the service does have a number of staff redeployed, absent due to isolating or testing Covid positive or needing to provide childcare which means the overall capacity during this period is vastly reduced and this will be jointly reviewed on a weekly basis
- The service will also commence contacting and managing the backlog of patients
- Physiotherapy will be offered to existing patients on a non-face to face basis for urgents and longest waiters and the service will commence contact from this week, however there is currently limited capacity due to the majority of staff being redeployed to support both community and in-patient services
- Reduced lists for routine MRIs and Ultrasound Scans offered at LNFH including those on the current backlog – allowing sufficient time to clean areas and ensure waiting areas are not full (please note some patients will remain on the waiting lists if they chose not to come into a hospital setting)
- Where appropriate Orthopaedic Choice will make an onward referral to secondary care (please note currently Independent Sector providers (Ramsay, BMI, Spire Southampton and Care UK Southampton) cannot accept any new referrals until released from the current Covid-19 contractual arrangements put in place by NHS England and NHS Improvement until the end of June.
- Unfortunately the service will not able to provide steroid injections due to the national guidance around these procedures and we ask that GPs do not refer in for this at this time whilst we are awaiting updated guidance in relation to this.
We thank you for your help and support over the past number of weeks and will keep you updated with regard to steroid injections.
