Dear colleague
October is here and we're officially into the autumn season. Here are your updates for this month.
Northumbria Clinical Interface meeting
Northumbria interface meeting is held on the 4th Wednesday of the Month 13.00 -13.45.
All GP's are welcome -; it's a forum to discuss and improve primary and secondary care 'interfaces' to reduce duplication, improve communication and pathways ensuring patients move smoothly between the two.
Please email Michaila.Close@northumbria-healthcare.nhs.uk if you would like to be added the Teams link.
Changes to ESR and CRP requesting
Many GP’s are aware in most acute medical settings, CRP has largely superseded ESR because it is faster, more sensitive to change, and less affected by confounding factors.
As a result all of the lab profiles eg DMARD testing will replace ESR with CRP. ESR will remain available for now but as the table below shows it has no advantages over CRP:
|
Feature |
CRP |
ESR |
|
Detecting acute inflammation |
Better |
Less sensitive |
|
Monitoring treatment response |
Better |
Slower |
|
Affected by age/anaemia |
Minimal |
Significant |
|
Useful in infection |
Better |
Less useful |
|
Useful in GCA/PMR |
Useful |
Less sensitive |
GP Excellence Through Collaboration
We are pleased to let you know that registration for our upcoming GP Excellence Through Collaboration event on Wednesday 11 November 2026 is now open.
You can sign up here - Excellence Through Collaboration
Once you are signed up, you will receive a confirmation email that will include your sessions for the day. This may go into your junk folder.
Please note, this is a popular event and spaces are likely to fill up quickly.
Northumbria's sensory processing service is expanding its offer
Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s Children’s Occupational Therapy Service is now able to extend its sensory processing offer to support children and young people in North Tyneside too.
To access the service, children, young people will need to be referred via a Healthcare Professional or Specialist Teacher from the Language & Communication Team. Adults with a Learning Disability can be referred by a member of the Community Learning Disability Team.
The current bespoke co-produced website has been updated and will continue to act as a hub of information to support parents / carers and other professionals. It uses video as well as written guides to aid understanding around how sensory processing can impact daily life. The contact section features a referral form for professionals, as well as providing key contact details should site visitors have any further questions.
Home first -; how we help people stay at home and out of hospital
As we move into winter, we wanted to reiterate the different community pathways we have in place to support patients where they live.
We have produced this at-a-glance guide which summarises the key services, how they work and how to contact them and access support for your patients.
Thank you for continuing to work with us to provide care in the right place for patients.
Click here to view the guide.
Single Point of Access Evaluation
The Northumbria Outpatient Transformation Programme is evaluating the Single Point of Access (SPoA) model, which combined the advice and guidance (A&G) and referral assessment service (RAS).
Now that all services deemed suitable for the SPoA model are live, at differing levels of maturity, it is now felt to be an appropriate time to seek to understand your views of the model experience to date, specifically what has worked well and where opportunities for improvement exist.
Your candid feedback is a valuable source of intelligence allowing us to continually review and refine our clinical services. The evaluation will be open until 01/11/2026 after which the anonymous responses will be collated and analysed. We will share a summary of the findings, including any actions or changes that arise as a result of the feedback, similarly we will share recommendations received from Secondary care for your consideration.
Please note this links to services by Northumbria Healthcare only.
Northumbria Healthcare Single Point of Access (SPoA) Evaluation -; Fill in form
Many thanks in advance for your time, your input is greatly appreciated and will be used to inform the design and delivery of future services.
What Diabetes training would be most useful to you?
The Northumbria Diabetes Service are currently planning a 2027 Diabetes training programme, and we want to make sure it focuses on the topics that will genuinely support you in practice.
We'd really appreciate it if you could take 2 minutes to complete our short survey and let us know what you'd find most valuable.
Diabetes Training and Support Needs Questionnaire -; Fill in form