Agenda item

The Board to receive a presentation from one medicare on the urgent care centre.

Representatives of One Medicare, Dr Jenkins and Mr Elwood gave a presentation to the Board as the providers of the Urgent Care Centre at the Royal Berkshire Bracknell Healthspace and made the following points:

• In terms of their background, One Medicare was now entering their tenth year in practice. They were based in Leeds and had centres across Yorkshire, Lincolnshire as well as an office in London and now the Urgent Care Centre (UCC) in Bracknell Forest. Their role included build, design and managing GP’s in good quality community premises. They were an experienced team clinically and operationally. One of their core values as an organisation was to put patients first, this was absolutely critical.
• The Bracknell Forest UCC would be a place for people with acute need for medical help but who did not need emergency care. The UCC would cover illness and injury; this would include fractures and dislocations. X-rays could also be undertaken at the UCC. The UCC would be able to deal with most sports and playground injuries. The UCC would not be able to treat critically ill patients, major trauma, and fractures to long bones or compounds.
• The UCC would be run in accordance with the requirements of local commissioners. One Medicare was keen to fulfil the needs of the local community. It would be open 8-8pm every day of the year. There would be a paediatric clinic which would run after school and bookable appointments would be available for this. One of the GPs at the UCC had a strong paediatric background and would be available to see children under five.  
• GPs would be on site throughout the opening times of the UCC as well as an emergency nurse practitioner. GPs would be able to refer to the UCC and so too would the NHS 111 line.
• The UCC would keep people in the community and would look and feel like primary care, this was deliberate. Local GPs would have knowledge of their patient’s attendance within four hours, electronically. There was recognition that it was important that the UCC did not interfere with the relationship between the GP and patient.
• There would be a Patient Education Centre, advocating ‘talk before you walk’. Given that people were living longer, self care was critical. One Medicare had already had discussions with the Public Health team around smoking cessation and healthy eating and joint work in these areas.
• One Medicare would work closely with A&E, Clinical Commissioning Groups, the South Central Ambulance Service and the 111 NHS line.
• One Medicare would encourage patient and community feedback and would present feedback in a transparent way on notice boards and on their website for all to see. Further an action plan would be created based on feedback.

In response to Board members’ queries, representatives from One Medicare made the following points:

• The target for waiting times at the UCC would be 30 minutes.
• One Medicare had also presented to the Bracknell and Ascot Clinical Commissioning Group as well as Public and Participation Groups.
• The UCC would adopt local safeguarding policy and act in accordance with locally agreed protocols for adults and children.
• It would be key to communicate an integrated message to the public around when to go to A&E or the UCC. They would work with Public Health and other local partners to ensure a consistent message was achieved.
• If the UCC experienced frequent attenders, these people would be considered further and a care plan developed where appropriate.
• The UCC would be able to access patient information and would be subject to the Caldecott Guardian principles. They recognised that the more patient information that they were able to access, the safer the experience would be for the patient.
• It would not be necessary to register to attend the UCC, the UCC would support those patients that were not registered anywhere in the NHS. These patients often had chaotic lifestyles and were hard to reach and suffered inequalities in the health system.
• It was confirmed that if patients arrived at A&E and could be referred back to the UCC, this would happen. There would be a round robin to gauge capacity of all health providers locally. They would also work with the Ambulance teams to ensure patients were brought to the UCC and not A&E wherever possible.

The Board welcomed the strong emphasis of supporting families.

The Director of Adult Services, Health & Housing stated that it would be key to work closely with One Medicare on a jointly commissioned service for older people and for the UCC to be able to refer patients in and out of the Council’s social care services.

The Chairman thanked Dr Jenkins and Mr Elwood for their presentation and stated that he looked forward to seeing the UCC up and running.