Introduction
Every time our patients are seen by another health or social service provider outside of the practice, we receive a letter from the service provider summarising their consultation, diagnosis, prognosis and other relevant information about their treatment plans. These documents are initially reviewed and filed by the Clinical Admin team. The team then triages the documents to an appropriate clinician based on contents of the letter.
Procedure
If there are any outstanding documents, ensure these are dealt with appropriately and prioritised before working on new documents.
Documents sent via post to LMC will be collected from LMC at the start of the day by a member of the Clinical Admin team working at NG, and brought to NG surgery
1️⃣ Reading and filtration
A member of the Clinical Admin team with a clinical background should be the first person to read and filter incoming documents to decide whether action is needed by Clinical Admin team, or another member of clinical staff.
Clinical Admin team should handle coding and referral-related documents.
- If a referral-related document comes via email, make sure to move the email to Referrals folder.
- If it requires urgent action, make sure to notify the team by sending a Teams message or Task to ensure they see it ASAP.
- If the information presented in the letter is unclear or appears incorrect / incomplete - the letter must be escalated to your line manager ASAP.
Do not open post addressed to any of the following:
- Sunil Gupta
- Sachin Gupta
- Alistair McMaster
- Tom Cronin
- Smriti Agarwal
- Irfan Aslam
- Luke Bell
- Tam Winter
- Penrose Health Management
- Hippo Labs Ltd
- Penrose Triage
- Penrose Health
- Penrose Services Ltd
This post should be given to Theresa Murfitt or left on her desk if you are working from Kingfisher. For other sites, there is a box at reception for Sunil or else reach out to your line manager.
2️⃣ Validating patient’s details
Check patient’s details to ensure you have the right patient selected on EMIS.
3️⃣ Triaging letters
Common letters & how we triage them
For letters that require GP action:
- Letters are divided equally between GPs working on the day
- Check the books on EMIS to see which regular GPs are working before triaging
- Check the books to see if any Locum GPs are working, and if so whether they handle admin tasks or not
- Letters do not need to go to the same GP that has handled them previously → it’s more important that a letter is reviewed quickly than by the same GP (but if the same GP is working on the day then you can try to send it to them)
You do not need to send a task as well for documents assigned to the Pharmacy team
4️⃣ Timing
Letters for Clinicians need to be sent out by 12pm (noon). These letters must be prioritised ASAP in the morning.
Non-urgent letters must be coded and filed by 5pm on the day.
If a backlog is building up – inform your line manager ASAP.
- If any documents have not been actioned, re-allocate to another member of staff
- Raise any concerns to the Clinical Admin Lead ASAP
5️⃣ SNOMED coding
Ensure that all relevant information is coded using SNOMED CT codes.
NB. It's very important to code Pacemaker or any other battery device (e.g. Neurostimulator, Cochlear implant, implantable cardiac defibrillator, Cardiac resynchronization device, drug delivery system, bone growth generator, etc.)
⚠️ Safeguarding
It is especially important that SNOMED codes are added for any incoming safeguarding documents.
MARAC reports must be dealt with in the following way:
- Upload report to patient’s notes and hide from online view (see ➡️)
- Add codes → ‘Subject of multi agency risk conference’ and ‘At high risk of domestic violence’
- Add EMIS warning with date MARAC report filed → ‘At high risk of domestic violence’
- Add MARAC report to notes of any other members of the household
- Check the household on EMIS to find other members
- Add appropriate codes and hide report from online view