East Sussex NHS Health Check Programme – Restarting delivery and COVID19 Survey

Overview

Following publication on 31^st July of the phase 3 letter to local health systems from Simon Stevens (Chief Exec) & Amanda Pritchard (Chief Operating Office), as we move from a level 4 to level 3 response, further guidance was published on 7^th August that further emphasises and provides detail of the expectations regarding the requirement to accelerate the return to near-normal levels of services & prepare for winter pressures, whilst taking action in a way that takes account of lessons learned, locks in beneficial changes & explicitly tackles inequalities & prevention. 

These documents emphasise that given the disproportionate impact of the pandemic, there is an urgent need to scale up action to reduce health inequalities, with an expectation deepening partnerships between the NHS and LAs and VCSE to better engage & protect the most vulnerable, using risk stratification/segmentation, so services are used by those in greatest need.  There is a call for preventative programmes that proactively engage those at greatest risk of poor health outcomes to be accelerated, including better targeting of LTC prevention/management & obesity reduction programmes that reflect need for culturally competent prevention. 

The guidance also states that general practice, working with system partners, should use the capacity released through the modified QOF requirements for 2020/21 to develop priority lists for preventative support and LTC management, such as obesity management and hypertension.  Priority groups for programmes such as obesity prevention, smoking cessation, and alcohol misuse, cardiovascular, hypertension, diabetes and respiratory disease prevention and long-term condition management should be engaged proactively, recognising the extra barriers to engagement which COVID-19 has brought (e.g. generating referrals into the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme on individuals of South Asian, Black African and Black Caribbean ethnicity and those from the most deprived communities).  Meanwhile the importance of offering health checks to those identified on GP registers with a learning disability or severe mental illness is emphasised as even more important than when ambitions were set in the NHS LTP.  

Why your views matter

East Sussex NHS Health Check commissioners are exploring how we can re-launch the NHS Health Check programme in a safe and sensible manner, which is flexible and supports practices to deliver the service. We also want to take this opportunity to address the Health Inequalities that COVID-19 has exposed.

Therefore, we are aiming to align NHS Health Checks with other types of checks, where the patient is eligible, such as the annual Learning Disability and Serious Mental Illness health checks and the assessment part of the COVID-19 Black and Minority Ethnic Locally Commissioned Service. 

To support this, we would ask you and colleagues involved in delivering the service to complete this survey.

Privacy information: This survey is anonymous and we don't ask you to provide any personal information. Please ensure that any comments you provide don't include any names or personal details of you or anyone else. For more information about how your data will be stored and processed please click here.

For more information on the NHS Health Check programme please email Ross.Boseley@eastsussex.gov.uk