Caring medic Alex is a real prize guy
A MEDIC has been honoured for pioneering a new approach to supporting care home residents in the Covid-19 pandemic.
Alex Facey, a physician associate with the Middlewood Partnership, which covers Bollington, Poynton and Disley, created a system. to help 14 Scare homes through coronavirus.
He has been highly commended at the GP Practice Awards 2020 held by medical publications Nursing in Practice, Management in Practice, Healthcare Leader, Pulse and The Pharmacist. At the start of the crisis, before national guidance was published, Alex introduced weekly virtual ward rounds – using technology to allow GPs to assess residents remotely.
He became the first point of contact for care homes, freeing up colleagues for other duties. And encouraged all care homes to use a system called Patient Access to order repeat medication online.
This resulted in an eightfold increase in online ordering of prescriptions and a huge reduction in the use of paper requests, faxes and requests in person.
Dr Peter Wilson, Middlewood Partnership chair, said: “Alex is a muchappreciated and valued member of our team.
“He underplays the level of his achievement in suggesting, designing and implementing his fantastic nursing and residential home wraparound plan over an incredibly short time, single-handedly, from a standing start.”
Dr Andrew Wilson, chair of NHS Cheshire Clinical Commissioning Group, added: “Alex is showing great leadership in establishing a positive and proactive role for the physician associate within general practice and is clearly improving care and outcomes.”
Physician associates are medically trained, generalist healthcare professionals who work alongside doctors and provide medical care.