PCN Services

The Healthier West Wirral PCN care home service consists of a service lead, a clinical lead, a care coordinator and a multidisciplinary clinical team. Together, they coordinate healthcare across 26 CQC registered care homes and have developed support networks with various stakeholders across Wirral in order to provide a high standard of collaborative care to those living in long term care settings. The care provided ranges from proactive regular reviews, acute reviews and advanced care planning, all with the aim to provide truly personalised and preventative care for patients in a care home setting. The team regularly attend multidisciplinary team meetings, alongside members of the community trust, GP’s, pharmacists, community geriatricians and patient advocates.

As a PCN we strive to ensure the same high level of tailored and personalised care to our care home residents, as we do for our wider community.

Please click here for more information: Care Home Services

Did you know that we now offer some GP appointments on evenings and Saturdays?

Please click here to find out more: Enhanced Access

• To reduce GP and referring clinician workload
• To prevent burdensome emergency hospital admissions and enable for patients to be cared for at home when it was safe to do so.
• To implement quicker, appropriate referrals to hospital when required

The PCN Nursing team aims to improve access for patients who may face barriers with traditional models of primary care. We support patients with registered learning disabilities or severe mental health needs access annual physical health checks.

We pride ourselves on offering holistic care to housebound patients with chronic diseases. This includes undertaking physical health checks and linking patients with services with that can provide them with additional support if required.

Furthermore, our team are instrumental in providing vaccinations to housebound and care home patients. This helps patients receive their vaccines in a timely manner and relieves pressure on GP practices during busy times.

The HWW clinical pharmacy team consists of Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians working as part of the general practice team to ensure safe, cost-effective prescribing of medicines.

Pharmacists conduct structured medication reviews (SMR’s), facilitating shared decision making with patients to get the best outcomes from their medicines. Pharmacists optimise lipid lowering therapy such as statins to reduce cholesterol in patients at risk of strokes and heart attacks. Other roles include high risk medicines monitoring such as anticoagulation monitoring including medicines such as apixaban, dabigatran, edoxaban. Other roles include dealing with patient and health care professional medicine queries, managing medicine and device safety alerts and liaising with community and hospital colleagues to improve patient care.

Pharmacy Technicians are registered healthcare professionals with the GPhC who support GP practices to safely reconcile medicines for patients following hospital discharge, safer prescribing including monitoring of medicines, and supporting patients with their medication. The most expensive medicine to the NHS is the one that doesn’t get taken. We also support our practice prescription teams with queries they have, or assisting our hospital or community Pharmacy colleagues with queries so the patient has a smooth transition of care with their medication.

More senior Pharmacy Technicians in primary care also conduct reviews within their own scope of practice, including anticoagulation reviews, cholesterol reviews, basic medication reviews, and supporting our care homes with medicines, in turn freeing up the valuable time of our primary care colleagues by offering our expertise in medicines, so they can focus on more complex patients who need additional care.

We have appointed 9 Physician Associates to join our team. Physician Associates are medically trained, generalist healthcare professionals, who work alongside doctors and provide medical care as an integral part of the multidisciplinary team. Physician Associates are dependent practitioners who are able to work autonomously but are also supported with clinical leadership. You may find your practice books you an appointment with a Physicians Associate, also known as a PA, as this is the best person to see you on the day.

Physician Associates support doctors in the diagnosis and management of patients. They are trained to perform a number of roles including: taking medical histories, performing examinations, analysing test results, and diagnosing illnesses.

We know that many of life’s problems can make us feel unwell. GPs tell us that a lot of people visit them feeling isolated or lonely; stressed out by work, money or housing problems; the stress of managing a long term health condition may be getting them down; they may not know what is making them feel low but they have come to their GP searching for help.

That is where Social Prescribing comes in.

Social Prescribing Link Workers are present in each surgery in Healthier West Wirral to help patients identify and link with sources of support within the community. These non-medical referral options can complement existing medical treatments to improve health and well-being.

Social Prescribing Link Workers are not medical professionals but have been specially trained to work alongside GPs and other clinical roles to ensure people get the care and support they need.

The role of a Social Prescribing Link Worker is to give people a chance to talk, listen to them carefully, offer emotional and practical support and provide them with the advice, information and support they need whatever their worries, questions or concerns.

Some examples of the type of support that can be provided are listed below:

• Being a non-judgemental listening ear; empowering with tools and techniques to balance every day stresses
• Referral into a specialist service for example for money advice (benefits, debt, and budgeting), housing needs, domestic abuse
• Encouragement to address lifestyle issues including healthy eating and physical activity, support to reduce dependency on alcohol, tobacco and other substances
• Support to manage a new health diagnosis or to positively manage a long term condition
• Joining a new course in the community where education and learning would be of benefit
• Referral into a specialist service for counselling and other mental health support
• Finding out what is available in the local community to help combat isolation and loneliness
• Finding a support group for a specific condition/health need
• Resolving practical issues around accessing food, fuel, prescriptions

To speak to your Social Prescribing Link Worker please ask a member of your GP practice or your health care professional to make a referral. This service is delivered in partnership with Citizens Advice Wirral.