GPS told to ‘pause routine care’ to support vaccines

A LETTER sent out to GPS in Nottinghamshire states routine care will be “paused” as the focus is shifted to Covid vaccinations.

The letter, which is titled “National call: Mandate to step down all non-urgent work”, was sent out by Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

It says urgent steps are needed to prioritise the vaccination of patients above routine care in order to protect the public from the Omicron variant.

The letter, seen by the Post, states: “All general practice teams are now asked to clinically prioritise service to free up maximum capacity to support the Covid-19 vaccinations programme alongside delivering urgent or emergency care and other critical services such as cancer.

“We are asking you to release as much capacity as possible, as a matter of urgency, to your PCN [Primary Care Network] vaccination model.

“We have additional pop-up sites going live, which we are asking you to support with capacity where possible.”

It adds: “This means you should pause routine and non-urgent care and redeploy staff to support administration of Covid-19 vaccinations.”

New centres are being opened in an attempt to speed up the vaccination process and offer walk-in booster jabs.

The Richard Herrod Leisure Centre, Gedling, Victoria Health Centre, Glasshouse Street and Newark Showground will all become available as vaccine booster sites from Monday.

Amanda Sullivan, Accountable Officer at NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire CCG, said: “We are always balancing in this pandemic the need to treat the most seriously ill alongside the need to prevent many people becoming ill.

“Where we can we have redeployed staff from non-essential areas. At the moment, we are doing that with minimal impact on services. But we are keeping this under very close watch on a daily basis.

“That will partly depend on how many people need to be admitted to hospital, because obviously that takes more capacity in our NHS workforce. If there are occasions where we do need to step down more routine things, people will be notified of that. But we are keeping it under a daily review.”