There is a pro-active drive for more & more services to be delivered in the community. With the development of Primary Care Networks (PCN’s), it gives groups of Practices in an area, an amazing opportunity to work together & develop specific services to benefit their own patient groups. The clinicians leading the Cardiology Group have been involved first hand in developing & delivering successful & award winning Cardiology services in the community. The services we can offer involve every aspect of the clinical encounter.
Aspects that we can develop:
Protocols for managing conditions ‘In-House’
Develop pathways for common conditions such as AF, Hypertension, Palpitations, creating a higher but clinically safe threshold before a referral to secondary care needs to be submitted. This increases knowledge & confidence of managing conditions in Primary Care, thereby reducing referrals.
Developing referral criteria for a number of Cardiovascular conditions.
We can create ‘tick-box’ referral pathway for a variety conditions to ensure referrals are appropriate streamlined once received in secondary care. These can be integrated into your own Patient management systems, whether it be System One, EMIS, Vision or Microtest Evolution.
Triaging Service of all referrals
We can triage all your Cardiology referrals to secondary care:
returning those felt to be inappropriate with advice on appropriate pathway
Returning with Advice & Guidance where face to face secondary care appointment is not necessarily required.
Developing Community Cardiology Clinics
We can set up General or Sub-Speciality clinics in the community together with GP & Nurse colleagues
We would ideally create a one stop clinic, so that appropriate investigations are done in advance or on the day to achieve maximum benefit from outpatient appointment & reduce follow up appointments wherever possible.
Training & upskilling your own clinicians (GPwSPi) to create a long term sustainable service.
We can act as trainers & mentors for GP colleagues wishing to further specialise in Cardiology. There are a number of Diploma & MSc. courses around the country which will help meet this requirement. They also require the clinician to undertake a number of supervised clinics as part of these courses.
In-House investigations & interventions.
We have the ability to perform a number of investigations with reports in the community.
ECG reporting service
24 to 14 day cardiac monitoring service
Ambulatory BP
Echocardiograms
Loop Recorder Implants & follow up