Dear Colleagues,

Last year, we informed you of the new 111 PRESS ‘0’ service for patients needing Palliative and End-of-Life Care. Nearly a year on, this service continues to support patients, families and carers.

As we approach Easter and the Bank Holiday – a typically very busy period - please ensure that your Palliative and End-of-Life patients know how to use the 111 PRESS ‘0’ service. This will help patients, families and carers to receive the support they need as quickly as possible.

If you have any feedback as a Healthcare Professional on the 111 PRESS ‘0’ service, we would love to hear from you; You can provide feedback here. If you want to provide feedback on behalf of your patient, please ensure the patient/carer/family has provided their consent.

To recap:

1. The 111 PRESS ‘0’ option does not replace any existing routes of communication for patients needing Palliative or End-of-Life Care. If patients have direct numbers to contact their Community Nursing Teams, Palliative Care Teams or Specialist Palliative Care Teams, they should continue to use these. If these routes are unavailable for patients, families or carers, then 111 PRESS ‘0’ can be used.

2. The 111 PRESS ‘0’ option is the first step in the transformation of Palliative and End-of-Life Care Services for patients via 111. At this stage, this option only routes the call through the 111 telephony process more quickly to a Call Handler. In the out-of-hours period, this will ensure that patients are passed onto the appropriate Health Board more efficiently, if applicable.

3. To ensure that this group of patients benefit from this service, it is vitally important that it is reserved for their use only. Therefore, please only inform Palliative and End-of-Life patients, families and carers of the 111 PRESS ‘0’ telephony option.

To reiterate, this is how the 111 PRESS ‘0’ process works:

1. If a Palliative or End-of-Life patient, family member or carer are unable to contact, or do not have contact details for, their Community Nursing Teams, Palliative Care Teams or Specialist Palliative Care Teams, they can use 111 PRESS ‘0’ for urgent care.

2. Patient, family member or carer selects preferred language (Welsh option 8, or English option 9).

3. Once the patient, family member or carer has selected preferred language and starts hearing the next stage of options, it is at this point they PRESS ‘0’.

4. If option ‘0’ is selected incorrectly, an automated message will advise on how to return to the main menu.

5. Palliative or End-of-Life patient, family member or carer are routed more quickly to a Call Handler who will assess the call and efficiently pass to the appropriate Health Board in out-of-hours, if applicable. 111 PRESS ‘0’ ensures a quicker response for patient, family member or carer.

The General Practitioners Committee Wales (GPC Wales) of the BMA, with the support of the Institute of General Practice Management in Wales (IGPM), has launched a practice finance survey which is open to all GP practices in Wales. 

It is aimed at practice/business managers although GP contractors can also complete. The aim of this survey is to gather data on the particular financial pressures that all practices in Wales are facing. This will prove invaluable for GPC Wales' evidence base going in to the GMS contract negotiations for the 2024-25 financial year, and to inform the ongoing Save Our Surgeries campaign.  

It will take you around 15 minutes to complete. Respondents will need to hand your recent practice financial statements and information on your staffing levels. We encourage GP partners to speak to their practice managers about completing the survey.  

www.surveymonkey.com/r/H5CNGQJ 

We ask that only one response per practice is submitted. 

If you would like to be entered into a random prize draw for the chance to win £50 of John Lewis vouchers, please leave your name and email address at the end.

We have received several queries from our members on the NERS referral process (NERS Theseus) in particular around the governance of the new system.

These concerns were raised with the DHCW data protection officer who has offered assurances on the process.

The GP is the controller at the point of referral, but once the information leaves the practice domain and lands within the application, Public Health Wales (PHW) (as the overarching contract holder), Local Authority, leisure centres/trusts and the local health board become joint data controllers of the data, with the system supplier the processor.  

The risk to GMPs in this process is extremely low, as once the data is securely transferred PHW assume responsibility as data controller for the referring software and jointly, with the Local Authority service, process the data.

We suggest practices ensure clear privacy information is available. The patient must be made aware at the point of the referral to whom their information will be shared. A simple statement to confirm with the patient that they want to take part and that information will be shared with PHW and the relevant LA/HB/NERS service provider needs to be communicated to the patient. Patients need to know where to find further information on the service and who to contact if they have any concerns. The DHCW DPO will update the privacy notice template and circulate it to their subscribing practices.

GP practices are welcome to email the NERS mailbox ( ners.wales@wales.nhs.uk ) with any feedback on how they are finding electronic referral to Theseus, including any suggestions for improvement. The NERS team understand it will take practices time to adjust when moving to a new process such as this and are aiming to make immediate changes where they can in response to feedback.