News and updates

Changes to what BHR CCGs will fund - effective from 8 January 2018

Dear GP and practice manager colleagues 

As you know, at the end of November the CCGs’ three governing bodies approved a further set of recommendations, developed by your GP clinical leads, related to the recent ‘Spending NHS Money Wisely 2’ public consultation. 

Once again, given the choice, none of us would have chosen to undertake this work; it has involved some difficult and much deliberated decisions, but we were encouraged by the levels of support locally among the public for some of the changes we are announcing. 

In short, this means changes to a range of services locally which will now no longer be funded by the NHS or will be subject to further restrictions, therefore impacting on patients. The changes come into effect from 8 January 2018. They include: 

• Stopping prescribing over the counter sleeping tablets, sunscreens, anti-malarial medicines
• Stopping certain ‘non-essential’ procedures
• Restricting who is eligible for cataract surgery and podiatry.

Just as we did for phase 1, we have worked with the CCGs’ communications team to develop a range of materials – attached - that we believe will help you to understand the agreed changes and communicate these to your patients. This ‘toolkit’ includes: 

1. A simple GP surgery poster listing the changes
2. Web text for your practice website to help explain changes to your patients
3. A general patient letter explaining the reasons for the changes to be used as required by GPs/PMs if you are asked about the changes by patients
4. A more detailed proactive patient letter for practices to send to patients on their list who are affected by prescribing changes, to be used, if you wish, as required.
5. Suggested Jayex message
6. A list of changes for all GPs to print out and use as an aide memoire 

The CCGs’ medicines management team is also working hard to support the necessary changes to ScriptSwitch, adding relevant GP messages to assist your prescribing as appropriate. Updated prescribing position statements can be found in the Medicines Management section of the intranet

A full breakdown of the proposals and what was approved is available on our CCG websites:

www.barkingdagenhamccg.nhs.uk/spending-wisely

www.haveringccg.nhs.uk/spending-wisely

www.redbridgeccg.nhs.uk/spending-wisely 

We anticipate the savings associated with this second round of changes will deliver around £3.75 million of that total. Unfortunately, no change is not an option, and it’s now up to us – with the public’s help - to get the local NHS onto a secure and sustainable footing to make sure we can maintain those vital services for local people and their families. 

Thank you for your support 

Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge CCG clinical leads
Spending NHS Money wisely 2