JONES, Ian

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today’s transforming Primary Care podcast. What difference does a national registration service make? I’m joined on the podcast today by a variety of different colleagues and associates from across primary care who’ve been using and advocating the service for some time. So, we’ve got Bex Cottey, the business manager at Conisbrough Group practice.
Bex is also a peer ambassador for transformation in the South York area. Welcome Bex. Chloe Smith. She’s a care navigator supervisor at the Roxton practice, Immingham. Welcome Chloe. We’ve got Lindsay Gollin, who’s the practice manager at Oakwood Lane medical practice in Leeds. Thank you Lindsay for your time. And I’m joined by my colleague this afternoon this morning. Hassan Zreim, who’s the engagement lead from the register with a GP surgery service. So thank you very much for all of your time. Really appreciate it.

And I’ll just give an overview of this morning’s session. So register with a GP surgery service. It enables administration teams from across those practices in England to take patient registrations online. And there is a new paper form much more quicker, quickly, efficiently than what is driven currently by the manual processes.

It’s free to all practices in England and is designed to reduce administrative burden on GP practice teams.
And we by gathering patient information.

By gathering patient information and matching it to health records.

It’s also designed to significantly reduce barriers for people wanting to access primary care service services, and it integrates seamlessly with other NHS services and a as a high satisfaction rate with over 95% of patients reporting a positive experience.

In this episode, we’ll discuss the reasons why a national digital service benefits both practices and patients, and what support is available to help you and your GP practice staff get up and running. So without further ado, let’s get into the questions and the first one is how important is it that everyone can register with the GP practice?

COTTEY, Bex
Absolutely crucial, crucial that everyone should have access to their local GP, the one that’s most convenient for them to use. The one that’s closest to their home, should they be ill, I think that there’s a lot of people out there who haven’t. They may have moved house, they haven’t registered with AGP, they may be new to the country, don’t know, have a registered GP and I think it making them, making it accessible for people.

And easy and straightforward and easy for them to find is, is, is really important.

And I think, naturally to us all now, the first thing we do when we want to find new information or find out what to do, we go online and we Google it, don’t we? So, I think I think this digital way of doing things is becoming the more natural way for people to do.

JONES, Ian
Expects.

GOLLIN, Lindsay
But I would.

ZREIM, Hassan
And I think, sorry, yes. And I think from a national perspective of having a one-way entry into registering with the GP is probably the most beneficial. So, it doesn’t become a unique experience everywhere else you go.

JONES, Ian
Son.

COTTEY, Bex

Yeah.

GOLLIN, Lindsay
Yeah, it absolutely drives that consistency and we’ve been refreshing our practice on sort of safer surgery approach.

That.

The people who some of the most vulnerable groups can find it the hardest to work out how to access. So, if that if that becomes either something that is online and therefore can go through the philtres of translating on and helpful translation functions that will work with that as well. You know, you then getting that consistency of approach that that wraps around all of all the practices. So, I think there’s huge benefits to be had for people who may have traditionally found it quite difficult or don’t really know how to then access primary care.

COTTEY, Bex
Yep, absolutely.

JONES, Ian
Absolutely, Lindsay. Thank you.

SMITH, Chloe
Agree with everything that’s been said. I mean, being with AGP practice, especially being local to AGP practices is not most important and people regularly need medication, treatments, tests and even community services which being registered with GP surgery gives you access to more easily.

COTTEY, Bex
Yep.

JONES, Ian
Thanks Chloe.

I’d just like to add also that we’re very fortunate in, in, in that we’ve been able to gain.
A testimonial from both the health watch and doctors of the world to to mention just two of the the kind of testimonials from.

National.

National organisations that support our service, because we we cater for those that the extremities of our society.

Such as homeless and asylum seekers and refugees who who desperately need to access our primary care service.

And can do so via our service.

What do you? Can I go on to the next question? What do you see as the patient benefits of the register with the GP surgery and why does it have? Why do you think it has such a high satisfaction rate of 95%?
Chloe.

SMITH, Chloe
Alright so.

We found.

As a practice we used to use an online.

Used to use an online platform. What we made ourselves and it was a portal, and patients would need a link and a password to access first. When we found when we came across this on the onboarding on the register with the GP surgery service, we found it so accessible for patients they could just Google it and they could be able to be able to register that way.

Patients didn’t need to wait for us to send them links to portals and links for the passwords.

Patients weren’t. I mean, it’s easy because patients are now notified either by text or e-mail, to confirm that they’re registered with the surgery now. And if we can’t accept them for any reason, we’ll we can give them advice and we can tell them to go on the website and see where else is accept in patients that may be better.

Or their area?

I mean Roxton itself is a veteran registered practice meaning we give extra care and support services. But this service registering them so quickly online especially it’s given us more information quickly and we can get them on to our systems so they can start the care more or less immediately.

JONES, Ian
Thank you, Chloe. Chloe, that’s great. Bex’s.

COTTEY, Bex
Yeah. I think Chloe made a really important point there. I think that the fewer barriers we have to it, including passwords and links and and these things that you know, we all have enough passwords, I can’t remember half of my passwords. Luckily, we have the technology for us to remember our passwords for us, but if we’re having to then contact the practice one way, get a password, go back, it just becomes a block.

So I think the smoother and the simpler we make this, the better it is for our patients. And I think by embedding a link into a website.

JONES, Ian
Are you?

COTTEY, Bex
Or going to the find AGP website that the NHS has. I think it just it’s one click and you’re in and you can do it. I think when we’re talking about convenience, if you’re a busy parent, you’re just trying to, you’ve moved to an area, you have the school run to do. You’re thinking about perhaps your work working hours, you might have just that really short period of time in an evening to sit down and register your register, your family to a new with a new GP.

You don’t. You don’t want to have to think. Oh, I’ve got to get there before the practice closes to pick up the paperwork, to take it home to fill it in, to then go back to the practice and hand it over and then have to wait and and has it been processed and like, like Chloe was saying, do it online. You can submit it in your own time. It can be at whatever time is convenient for the patient themselves and then get a text message to say you’re registered; you have that Peace of Mind. It’s done. It’s quick and it’s simple.

JONES, Ian 
Bex. Lindsay, let’s bring you in next. Thank you.

GOLLIN, Lindsay
Yeah, I totally agree with everything that specs has said and and I think it also it it makes it really clear that there is no requirement to be proving your identity or proving your registration in order to register with the general practice. And I know when I’ve, you know, I’ve been watching my team at the front desk, you get some patients who come in who are so organised and there’s a big folder and they’ve printed out all of this stuff and they’ve got their tenancy agreement and they’ve got their passports and there, you know, and and they’re really, really organised. That’s great. But they’ve still had to.

COTTEY, Bex
Mm hmm.

GOLLIN, Lindsay
Back together at a point where they’re probably either relocating or trying to make other life decisions as well. And those are the people who are already have that social and cultural capital to understand the system. So by removing all of that, and you can do it from home with support, you know, at a time that suits you just it’s just it gives that level playing field across the piece, which I think is really important.

COTTEY, Bex
Mm hmm.
Yeah.

JONES, Ian
Absolutely, Lindsay. Thank you, Hassan.

ZREIM, Hassan
They think I was actually agreeing with everything that was being said. One more thing that I’d like to raise is that this service is quite intelligent, so depending on the patient journey that you’re taking, the reason why it’s becoming so easy to use is the service detects what kind of question it needs to ask you. Depending on the questions you’ve already answered. So, you don’t have to go through the full question set. It’ll actually narrate it to be what you exactly need to answer, and that’s what they’re really liking about it.

COTTEY, Bex
Mm hmm.
Yeah.

JONES, Ian
Stuff. Thanks Susan. And and what I would say about that convenience is that there’s many people out there with physical or mental disabilities that impede their confidence to come into a practice and by having that accessibility online 24/7, 365 days a year, we even had a submission from a patient on Christmas Day this year. It just.

Allows that freedom and that the ability to put the kind of these choices into the patient’s hands rather than like Bex summarised there, the the kind of inefficient process whereby.

Combination of IED and proof of address and coming into practice to pick up forms to go. It’s just an inefficient process and we want to replicate something that’s very much like how Tesco’s and other online groceries do. The process is the same, irrelevant, aware that store is whether the patients in Penrith or Penzance, if you’re registering with AGP practice, that process is a repeatable, reproducible process.

COTTEY, Bex
Mm hmm.

JONES, Ian
That’s easy to follow.

COTTEY, Bex
Yeah, just adding on to that thing about accessibility, we’re not just talking about how easily it is to click on a link and use a system but talking about accessibility from a disabilities point of view or a digital inclusion point of view. You know this, these things can be also done on behalf of someone. So, if you are a carer for someone, you can also do this on their behalf and you don’t have to.

JONES, Ian
X.

COTTEY, BexYou know, prove anything to anyone. You can just go on to say, look, I’m going to take you through this step by step. Do it for them.

You know, we have a lot of people that perhaps need to do that for their children or for elderly patients that they’re looking after, or people with learning disabilities etcetera. So again, it takes down that, that burden of of proof or that burden of of having to say well, well, who are you in relation to this person sit at home with them and do it together with them. It makes it much easier.

JONES, Ian
Brilliant, thanks, Bex. And let’s not forget about those people within our cohorts of our society that are very digitally excluded and don’t want to engage with the digital agenda. And my father who’s 96, sorry, 97 last week. He still insists on taking his green snippets of of repeat prescriptions into the practice every week to 10 days because he likes that ability to hand over.

COTTEY, Bex
Mm hmm mm hmm.

JONES, Ian
Responsibility of a piece of paper and he knows that he’s got a face in his mind that we mustn’t forget about those. So what? What are we doing to?

To for those people that don’t want to use online services specs. If you don’t mind.

COTTEY, Bex
Yeah. So, I think it absolutely for many people, it’s actually part of their routine and their social life. It’s getting out into the village, maybe a little bit of exercise, leaving the house, walking to the practice. It’s about saying to them that this is not a closed Ave for you. This is just another option for those people who just find the digital way more convenient for their life. Then we still have a standardised way, and we can still offer this exactly the same questions and the same.

Enrolling process.

But in paper format, if that’s how they would prefer to do it, we will not as a as an organisation within the NHS to exclude people just because they can’t or or don’t want to use the digital route. We’re just opening these up to people to say it’s it’s most convenient for many, but just not all.

GOLLIN, Lindsay
And if for those people, for whom it is convenient, if they can use it, that gives the gift of time back to our reception team to be able to spend that little bit additional time with those who do need that personal support or do want to come and do it face to face, that that’s the whole point of this is that those who can can go online, it gives us a bit hopefully at some point they’ll be, you know, we’ll see that benefit that we’ve then can spend more time with those who actually need the support of of.

JONES, Ian
Absolutely.

GOLLIN, Lindsay
16.

COTTEY, Bex
100% Lindsay.

JONES, Ian
Absolutely, Lindsay, it does free up time to provide those extra bits of of care and support for those who need it most, Chloe.

SMITH, Chloe
Yeah. So, what I what we found is that even when we got the paper registration form as well when they brought out the paper version, we found it’s the same. So, no one would encounter any different questions than that what they would do online. So even if you get patients that aren’t very computer literate or just don’t have the means or access to do it online, they have the choice.

If they think, oh, I’ll just pop to the surgery.

And I’ll go with my Nana, and I want to register at hair at hair practice as well. It’s we have the forms there. They don’t have to go online if they don’t want to.

It’s creating equal opportunities for everyone and we find that if there are patients that come in with disabilities and they can’t do the online forms or they’re even going to struggle doing the paper forms, they’ll be care navigators on hand to help them do the forms.

Because then they can say that they filled out on path of the patient as well.

JONES, Ian
Fantastic, Chloe, thank you so much. OK guys, so we’ve summarised as best we can the kind of the, the patient benefits. But what about the practices, you know, what are the, what are the practice benefits or the practice outcomes that we as a service registered with the GP surgery service are delivering to you and your administration teams. Lindsay, can I pick on you to go first please?

GOLLIN, Lindsay
Yep, absolutely.

I think one of the key things that it is important to think about when you’re implementing this as a practice is to think about separating the function of registration and on boarding of care. And I think when this has always been traditionally done over the front desk with paper, we’ve always given a form the official registration form, but usually followed it up with something very bespoke to the practice. That actually then is actually more designed about how you want board care.

And I think it’s really helpful to split this now into sort of two different functions. So this is about registering and then you’ve still got to give some sort to how you then on board the care. So, you follow up that registration in order to then be able to find out about things like repeat medications or things that you want to then get going. So, the benefits for us registering are.

Team have found it comes into the inbox. We drag and drop them into a folder so they’re all nicely together. You haven’t got paper forms going astray. We can allocate time for somebody to sit and work through them, and for me, I think the absolute thing that’s been so clear about this is the the clinical system that we use.

Registering can be a little bit hit and miss at times, particularly when you’ve got to try and find names or dates of birth and they don’t quite all matches.

And you run the risk of creating a new record when the record and then you’ve got, then you’re into the realms of duplication. You’ve got to try and mop that up afterwards.

You have patients who then have two separate NHS records for quite some time. Until that can all get resolved in the back office and merged. If you’re processing off the register with the GP surgery, you don’t have any of that. It’s a huge time saving and the frustration we have this big pile of registration forms all covered in post. It’s with careful notes of what we’ve tried this, and we’ve tried that, and we can’t get them and we still none of that.

COTTEY, Bex
Yeah.

GOLLIN, Lindsay
So all of that time that you save, you can then think about, OK, once the registration is in and confirmed, how am I going to on board this patient in a way that’s relevant to them have they’ve already told us they’ve got repeat meds. I can now go and follow that up. So it’s it’s about being able to take that time and purpose it to something that’s got a real value add to it rather than the frustrations of trying to process sometimes what seems to be a very difficult.

Yeah. What was traditionally could often be very complex and trying to actually complete the physical registration.

And sometimes he would spend so long trying to complete the physical registration, you’d forget about the onboarding bit anyway.

JONES, Ian
Thanks, Lindsay. That’s brilliant, Bex.

COTTEY, Bex
That’s true. And and when we’re talking about, I mean we talked about Lindsay just mentioned there about system errors about duplicating patient records and so on. And then having to unravel that and then pick that later. But you also using the online method, you’re eliminating those interpretive errors. So, was that a one, was that an I was it an L, you know reading people’s hand handwriting?

Writing down just that misinterpretation. If we’re copying, pasting and clicking and dragging into clinical systems, we’re taking exactly what the patient has told us. We’re not having to interpret; we’re not having to understand somebody’s handwriting. We’re not trying to yet. And for people, some people where English is not their first language or they’re not, their literacy level is not particularly high. It’s very easy for us to misinterpret what they’re trying to tell us or what they’ve written. So doing this digitally.

And getting help to do this digitally.

I I think is another way to eliminate those errors and I would even go so far as to say it’ll be really good if practices when they if they are giving patients the option to come into practice to register and they’re looking at the paper process, why not get the patient to come in and do the online process with the patient rather than doing it in paper format. So and it all comes into the practice digitally as we do with perhaps our online consultations.

JONES, Ian (NHS ENGLAND – X26)   21:27
Brilliant point, Bex. Thank you, Chloe, do you hope you don’t mind me bringing you in at this point, but can you tell us about how practices still retain control of the registration submissions that they received from the service?

SMITH, Chloe
In control. Sorry. Can you say it again?

JONES, Ian
Absolutely can. Can you tell us how that how practices can still retain control of the registrations at their service? Do they have to accept everyone? You know, how does it come in? How would you then you know, how would you then manage the service, etcetera.

SMITH, Chloe
So what we’ve found is that we can look, there’s a lot because we’ve made a practice boundary. We’ve obviously got a practice boundary.

Which we practice open book.

Out keep our books open. We accept all patients. However, we do have to because we have got a large number of patients. We’ve got 34 going on to 35,000 patients. So, we need to do keep it restricted to somewhat.

So.

We tend to look at the address and we decide if that is out of area, whereas we can do that straight away. We can see, oh, this patient is out of area, so then we can contact the patient, and we can give that because of the registration forms registrate the contact information that’s given us, we can tell them exactly why how we can help them going forward, where they can get the services from.

We found that.

As Bex and Lindsay said, there’s less N8. There’s less errors with the NHS numbers being made. Making before was making duplicate records because people would put the surname in the first name, and it would great. It would create confusion because it says let’s create another record so it’s come a long way really where we can.

Gain still some access with saying right?

You will reject some applications because they’re either out of area or we can register more patients more accessibly as well.

JONES, Ian
That’s brilliant. Thank you. Chloe. Hassan. Hassan. Do you mind me bringing you in at this point? Could you, you know, from our perspective on the from the services perspective, what do we view as the kind of key outcomes that we’re delivering to practices from our functionality?

ZREIM, Hassan
Well, first of all, thank you everybody who contributed to this pot because the majority of the things that we talk about with the benefits of the service had already been raised. But one more area of it is, you know the the integrations into find a GPDE deck, the NHS login, widening that support and solutions that are built into the service makes it much more than just a digital form.

These are the things that are making the solutions even better.

And we look into a perspective of making it even more better with integration coming in Q1 just around the corner, which should also benefit the surgeries of instead of I know we’ve gone from perspective where we would have to look through the handwriting. Now we’re copying and pasting that information into the clinical system. But at some point, in Q1, we’ll also have integrations ready.

COTTEY, Bex
We’re very excited about that, Hassan.

ZREIM, Hassan
Yes, I know a lot of people are excited about it. So am I.

JONES, Ian
Are we?

ZREIM, Hassan
Yeah, these are some of the things that we we would have our perspective on those benefits for the practices obviously.

JONES, Ian
Thanks, Hassan. That’s great, Lindsay.
How what? How does that work for you as a practice? What’s kind of what do we do with the kind of patients, post code and how can we support those practices or either do not accept our patients who live out of area or those that are a little bit more flexible. What’s your approach within your practice and how flexible is the solution from that perspective?

GOLLIN, Lindsay
So we do accept out of area registrations, but subject to the restrictions that we would discuss with those patients. So, for us, the fact that it can flag this is a patient who’s out of your court immediate core boundary. We would then have that conversation with them as to say, well, you know, we will accept you as a patient. Here are some, some restrictions.

With them can send them an information leaflet so that they understand, but we can also make it means that we can have a conversation that talks about.

If you’re, if you’re out with the practice boundary, there are we can make them aware of what potential knock on might be to other services, whether that’s a health visiting team or a district nursing team, because people at different stages of their lives don’t necessarily think about what the impact of those potential service implications might be until they need them. And at that point, it’s usually quite stressful to then make have to make up decisions. So.

We would, we would usually contact them, have that conversation with them, give them some information and if that’s what they want to do, then we would register them as an out of out of boundary patient. But we’ve also then got that safety net of knowing that they’ve had that conversation and that they are aware of it. So that hopefully should then needs change.

They might also understand OK, this and that might be the time to look at, you know, no longer being with the practices me where I work, but actually being with the practices near where I live and therefore they’ve got that convenience and we also know that we’ve done, yeah, we’ve helped them make an informed choice which I think is the most important thing, isn’t it?

JONES, Ian
Absolutely, Lindsay. Yeah, very well summarised. Thank you. So, lots of stuff there that we’re delivering in terms of the the practice benefits to you guys. So yeah, please do.

Take note of that. So, I guess everyone, you know, we’ve found out what the practice benefits are. We know what the patient benefits are. I bet it takes a kind of an inordinate amount of time to enrol Bex and Chloe what’s how long did it take you guys?

And what support did you access from the national team to support your enrolment process? Bex and Chloe?

SMITH, Chloe
And what we found is that the enrolment was really quick, and we got information straight away of what they needed from our end. We sent it across straight away. And I mean they always kept in touch, telling us what the next stage was, what they were going to do next, how long it would take. It wasn’t a lengthy process at all. It was very little what I had to do this end to make sure it was all set up.

Any problems I did occur?

Problems where? Because we’ve got sister practices, we’ve got 3 practices, all in different areas.
So we had to make sure they were set up as well, but it was really simple. It was they made it simple.
Anything that I asked, it was responded to almost immediately, and what I like is that anything that on the pilot scheme when it was being piloted, you could give them feedback.

All the time and say I think that this question needs to be added in. Can you add this question in and they’d always take it in consideration if they found that it was a need for just the basic registration that they feel like it would need was needed in there, then they would add it and they would tell you it’s straight away, right? We’ve added these questions. They’re available straight away. We’ve amended the paper registrations. Here’s a new form. Everything was very quick, and it’s transformed. It’s transformed the way we.

JONES, Ian
That’s great to hear, Chloe. Thank you, Bex.

COTTEY, Bex
Yeah.

I couldn’t agree more. Chloe, it’s been very, very slick. Very simple. Very quick, very easy. It’s been no hassle on our part. And once it was up and running, we could then also embed that link within our own website, which means that it doesn’t matter how people reach us, whether it’s through find Ag P, the NHS route, or whether it’s through our home page because they’ve done the Google search for what’s in their area. It’s been, it’s been seamless, and it means that everything comes in.

Very quickly and simply and consistently.

JONES, Ian
Thank you, Lindsay. How’s your experience been at your practice?

GOLLIN, Lindsay
Well, I think we’ve signed up much later than you guys. So, we weren’t we we’ve just gone live with it. We weren’t part of the the pilot scheme. It’s even more simple to be honest. I think I signed up and I put the link on our web page and then I just let the the reception team know at the practice, you know, keep your eye on the inbox because things are likely to come through and that’s pretty much all we did and registration started to flow through and.

To the point actually where thanks to all the recent NHS e-mail changes with MFA and all the rest of it, our practice e-mail changed midway through this year, and we’d failed to pick up that it was embedded within this registration process. So actually, about two weeks ago our registrations stopped because that that e-mail address was no longer valid and actually it was. It was the team who sort of said hang on a minute, you know, we reliably get.

You know this many numbers per week. We usually get sort of 20 to 30 a week they’ve got.

And literally as they said that we had an e-mail pop up from the support team to say we’re getting registrations pinging back from your e-mail address, something’s gone wrong. We’ve sorted that out. We’ve corrected the e-mail and we’re just waiting for them to send our backlog through back to us. So, in terms of enrolling, couldn’t be more straightforward, but I think what was really good was that when something went wrong that we haven’t even detected it got wrong. You know, they did. We’d already had that contact and we’d already been told how to put it right.

COTTEY, Bex
Yeah, the support’s been very, very good. Yeah.

JONES, Ian
That’s great to hear. And obviously that’s one of the benefits of a national service and that we’re monitoring it 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So that when there are issues and they do happen, unfortunately you know, but we are able to communicate to you when there are issues. So, it’s good to hear that we’ve been doing that and that’s your experience. Thank you, ladies.

So OK, so what’s next, guys? So, what would you advise practices to do now? You know, you know, when we know that?

All clinical system integration isn’t going to be available until the latter stages of quarter one next year, 2025. So, what would you advise practices to do now, you know what should we be doing?
Thanks.

COTTEY, Bex
I would say on behalf of our practice.

That I think you have to look at this from a convenience for yourself as well as your patients. I think it’s an absolute no brainer. Before we had this option, we were already starting to look at external companies that would manage our patient enrolments for us and this popped up it was coincidence, but it was, it was serendipitous. It was very positive, happened at the same time this popped up and I said Well, why am I going to pay for a service when this is already in development? It’s free to use.

It’s all central. It’s all standardised. Like we said, up and down the country. I just said it. It just makes no sense to go with something external that we’re having to pay for that does it in a unique way to us. So, I would say to practices sign up now and I I always use the analogy and people may have heard me speak about this before, an analogy where I say you don’t wait to buy a new mobile phone because there might be an upgrade in a couple of months’ time.

You buy the mobile phone because it offers you something really positive.

Really good now. And you enjoy the benefits of that upgrade in a couple of months. Time brings with it. So why would you do that? Why would you do it any differently with this this technology? So, jump on the bandwagon now, get it installed. We’ve already heard from everybody else how easy and simple it is to do it. You’re copying and pasting information into register the patients. A lot of the background cheques and things have already been done. We’re reducing the errors.

And and and. I just think it’s just saved us so much time and so much help headache, so many headaches. It’s really well worth doing.

Both for our patients and for our practice.

JONES, Ian
That’s great. Thank you, Bex, Chloe.

SMITH, Chloe
Our advice would definitely be to start now. Don’t delay.

Let the new patients experience more accessible way, a way to register with your practice. It will benefit everyone, benefits all patients around you, even care homes who like to use the online who can always get to the surgeries because of taking out time out of care and they need so many carers on site. We find that care homes use it a lot.

COTTEY, Bex
Mm hmm.

SMITH, Chloe
We’re getting rid of the lengthy and multiple different forms that patients.
Given every surgery, register in the same way the correct and the most detailed information will be available for all practices straight away.

I’d like to conclude that also that we are we’re a dispensing practice. So, if you are a dispensing practice you can opt into those questions as well that’s an added benefit.

COTTEY, Bex
Hmm.

SMITH, Chloe
I think you just need to start straight away. There’s no need to delay.

JONES, Ian
Great stuff. Chloe. Hasan, can I just bring you in at this point from a service perspective? Why, what? What are we asking practices to do in this these final days of the mobilisation window?

ZREIM, Hassan
I mean firstly before I answer the question, I have a huge thank you to the practices that we’re speaking to today because they.

‘Ve literally taken over my job today because this is the majority of the things that I highlight when I speak to the practice who aren’t enrolled about all of these benefits and sometimes they can be a bit critical on is it really to that extent and now they get to hear your voices to actually say yes it is to that extent. And to answer your question, Ian, what we encourage the practices is to enrol.

End of October is right around the corner. I always say open an eye. Close an eye where they the enrolment is super easy. It takes barely 5 minutes to do through our website.

And don’t wait for integration to come over. I would probably say take these little last months that we have to get familiar with the service even though as you’ve heard, it’s easy to adopt and start using, but get familiar and then right before you know it integration will be right at your steps.

JONES, Ian
That’s brilliant. Thank you. And if I might add, just to add further to to what the to the conversation that Chloe was mentioned that I’ve personally been working with a practice in Manchester who’s got 33 care homes within their locality, and we’ve rolled this out to each one of those. So, they’ve got care coordinators within the care home who’ve got and this the link to our form accessible from their iPads or whichever.

COTTEY, Bex
Yeah.

JONES, Ian
Device they’re using.

You know the solution is device agnostic and the simplicity and the ease. Now they can. The care facilitator can register the patient while they’re sat by their bedside or in their comfy chair, and they’re not going through endless reams of of paper registration forms that they then have to find the time to take into the practice so that you know, that’s just one of the many stories that that we’ve had as a service to to feed in.

OK guys, I think this could be the the final kind of the the the final.

Question any more advice that you would give to your GP practice counterparts in terms of kind of the kind of the next steps or the things to kind of watch out for the things that kind of made it easier?
Over to you guys in in practice land.

COTTEY, Bex
I think there’s.

JONES, Ian
Lindsay, can I bring you in? Sorry, Bex. Do you mind me bringing you in, Lindsay?

COTTEY, Bex
OK.

GOLLIN, Lindsay
Well, I’m no I was gonna. I’m gonna. Well, I think.

JONES, Ian
OK, Bex. Come on, Bex. Yeah.

COTTEY, Bex
I was going to say I think don’t be afraid of the technology.

I think knowing from and certainly from our experience on this on this podcast today.

We know that the support is there should you need it, so try it. People in the support team will hold your hand through the process and help you. If you’ve got any questions, it’s not. It’s not big, it’s not scary. It’s just a really good time saving tool.

JONES, Ian
For anymore Chloe.

SMITH, Chloe
So I mean a bit like what we’ve said before about how highly we recommend it, the support and the service we’ve registered with the GP team are excellent. They’ve given us more. Any help that we needed any questions of answers straight away.

We would highly recommend to do the switch.

It will benefit everyone.

And like I’ve said before, it gets rid of your old systems of the lengthy forms.

And I can’t say how great the service is and we would never change it. We wouldn’t ever go back to the old way.

JONES, Ian
Thanks, Chloe. That’s amazing to hear, Lindsay.

GOLLIN, Lindsay
Say just go for it in a weird way. It’s a bit like when you’ve been constantly beating your head against a brick wall. You don’t realise how nice it is until you stop, and I think you know for us what really took us by surprise was just how much time and head space got cleared up by not having to mop up all of the the post confusion and and it happened so much more often than you think it does.

It’s hardest and I think most impacts practices in areas where you’ve got a very diverse population.
And and you know, it’s your point. Bex’s about being held hostage to, you know, handwriting errors and transposition errors and all the rest of it. But even even if you think that doesn’t apply to your population, you would be surprised at how much retrospective admin this just takes away from you. And you don’t realise how much of it’s been there until it stops.

JONES, Ian
That’s fabulous. Thank you, Lindsay.

COTTEY, Bex
I completely agree, Lindsay.

JONES, Ian
Thank you everyone. Brilliant. So, if I if I might just take the opportunity to summarise what we’ve covered this morning. So, we’ve covered the, the patient benefits and the outcomes that we’re delivering. It’s a solution that’s available 24/7. The 95% of of patients love the fact that we’ve provided this efficient service. We’re catering for all the extremities in our society, those that need to access primary care the most.

In terms of being able to offer a digital and a paper form, the practice benefits to you are multifold. So we’ve heard about how we do, how we’re doing, the PDS trace and the NHS number match that so that you don’t have to, we take your edec catchment area boundaries so that and we tell you whether those patients are in or outside of your catchment area and if you’ve got a hard block on your catchment area, we won’t send you any submissions.

We’ve also covered how easy it is for you to enrol.

It literally takes you 4 to 5 minutes submitting four or five bits of key information that we need to enrol and all of the all of the kind of the panel this morning. So, Bex’s from Conisbrough Lindsay at Oakwood Lane and Chloe at Roxton have all said look guys it’s just a no brainer it’s dead easy for you to do and and you won’t regret the actions that you take now.

Whilst we wait for a GPIT integration.

Thank you, everyone. Really appreciate your time and we look forward to having your enrolment coming through in the next few days.