Kings Medical Practice News www.kingmedicalpractice.co.uk

We had some good news about our prescribing today. Keeping our prescribing costs under control and changing what we prescribe to more cost effective preparations is something that the practice can and does do. Over the last 12 months the practice has, with the help of a Community Pharmacist from Wakefield NHS, done several things to reduce our prescribing and ensure cost effective prescribing Extensively used Script Switch - this is a computer programme linked to our clinical system that suggests more cost effective drugs. I have previously blogged about this. Click here to read how it works Script Switch - in the quarter ending 31/12/10 we accepted 37% of Script Switch suggestions. Stopping prescribing glucosamine - we have reduced our prescribing of glucosamine from £456.26 per 1000 patients to £26.10 per 1000 patients in the quarter ending 31/12/10 Continuing to prescribe low cost PPIs (to stop stomach acid) - 94% of our prescriptions for PPIs in quarter ending 31/12/10 were for l

We had our annual practice basic life support update on our training afternoon on Wednesday. All practice staff attended - doctors, nurses and admin staff and we were all updated and drilled in what to do if a person suddenly collapses in the practice (and indeed outside the surgery as well). We practiced on adults, children's and babies. The trainers had brought a super training vest for dealing with patients who are choking (click here for details) . The procedure is to bend the patient over and give them five back slaps to help relieve the choking, if that does not work you give five abdominal thrusts. The vest has a little gadget on the front that if you do the abdominal thrusts correctly you relieve the obstruction and a polystyrene bung goes floating across the room! Doing it together as a practice teams embeds what you have to do very deeply so that all members of staff know what they have to do, have practiced it and are confident that they can do it. Of course the resuscit

The practice provides a full travel advice service to our registered patients including travel vaccinations, travel health advice, advice about malaria prophylaxis and Yellow Fever vaccination. Most travel vaccination are free - the exceptions are generally if you are going to unusual places or doing unusual things e.g. back packing trips or staying somewhere for longer than three months. The commonest vaccinations patients have to pay for are Yellow Fever, Hepatitis B and Rabies vaccinations. You will also have to pay for malaria prophylaxis but the practice doesnot charge if you need a private prescription for malaria prophylaxis. The practice is a registered Yellow Fever Vaccination centre. We are able to provide just Yellow Fever vaccinations and advice to patients who are not registered with the practice. Our travel advice service is run by our nursing team and they would like patients to fill in a Pre Travel Questionnaire before you attend

At our regular Wednesday practice education meeting last week we met our local NHS Health Trainers and they told us about the new 'Get Active! Exercise on Prescription Scheme'. This is a scheme whereby health professionals (doctors and nurses) can refer patients to a local leisure centre for an individualised exercise programme. Suitable patients include patients with asthma, high blood pressure, depression, COPD and many more conditions. Thirty minutes of moderate exercise, five time a week, reduces you blood pressure, risk of heart disease, weight and stress levels. The scheme is a joint initiative between NHS Wakefield District and Wakefield Council and it is funded until December 2012. If you are referred into instructed exercise the costs of each session is £2.60. However, you may be able to access other options that are lower cost or free. All the doctors and nurses in the practice have referral forms so if you think that exercise might help your health then just ask!