Dudley Strategy for Tackling Health Inequalities 2010-15

- primary healthcare teams coming together within a practice or on a locality basis,involving GP practice staff, PCT community staff, pharmacists and social carestaff – this will support local integration and coordination of services- joint CPD between consultants, GPs, nurses, therapists, pharmacists, supportworkers and managers working in both secondary and primary care, initially tosupport better management of long term conditions, improving care pathways andpersonalised services.The PCT will also explore opportunities to provide training to all primary carecontractors including dentists, pharmacists and opticians.Good practice management enables practices to have robust business and clinicalsystems in place. Practice management is the bedrock of good clinical outcomes2.4 Access To Primary CareResearch into the access to primary care by Black and Minority Ethnic (BME)communities has been shown that certain communities do not access primary care.The PCT has commissioned a new GP practice in the Kates Hill ward that willprovide an outreach facility to engage with groups offering health promotion adviceand encourage them to use all primary care services appropriately. Patients will alsobe able to register with this new practice so long as they live within a reasonabledistance.3. Systematic and targeted prevention and early detection of diseaseThe needs assessment found that the prevalence rates of some major diseases aremuch lower than expected. This suggests that there are significant numbers ofpeople who are in the early stages of diseases, which if treated, could improve theirlife expectancy.Based upon GP practice disease registers an estimate of prevalence can be madetaking account of age, gender, ethnicity and deprivation. An analysis of the 2008/9data shows that there may be quite large numbers of people missing from diseaseregisters:Table 1: GP Disease RegistersDiseasesEstimated number of people‘missing’ from GP registersHypertension 28,700Asthma 10,300Dementia 3,000Diabetes 1,800Coronary heart 1,990disease (CHD)Strokes/TIA 800180