Recommendation
Commissioners of GP services should ensure, and ensure that they can demonstrate, that GPs are treating all patients, who present with depressive symptoms, in line with the current national NICE guidance ‘Depression: The treatment and management of depression in adults …
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Commissioners of GP services should ensure, and ensure that they can demonstrate, that GPs are treating all patients, who present with depressive symptoms, in line with the current national NICE guidance ‘Depression: The treatment and management of depression in adults (update) *CG90+ 2009’
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View response
o NICE guidelines are good practice recommendations. The Area Team NHS England ensures through the Local Medical Councils and newsletters that GPs are made aware of all new guidance;
o GPs are expected to work within the Good Medical Practice framework which is revised annually (General Medical Council 2013);
o GPs all use only accredited clinical IT systems which have in-built, condition specific management parameters which reflect current best practice, including the most recent NICE guidance.
Recommendation
Commissioners of GP services should undertake a review of the provision of psychological therapies within the relevant GP surgery to ensure that practice, referral and uptake rates are consistent with national standards.
Recommendation
Commissioners of GP services should work with GPs to establish methods of assuring themselves that GP record keeping is of a consistently high standard
View response
o GPs are expected to work within the Good Medical Practice framework which is revised annually (General Medical Council 2013), within this is a chapter outlining the standards for record keeping called ‘Record your work clearly, accurately and legibly’.
o The General Medical Services contract states that a practice will ‘keep adequate records of its attendance and treatment of its patients’.
Recommendation
Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust should continually monitor community team performance in relation to adherence to prescribed timescales for response to urgent referrals, and the reasons for any variance.
Recommendation
Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust should provide clinical risk assessment documentation, for use by workers, which enables them to clearly mark when a potential aspect of clinical risk has not been assessed, the reasons for this, and plans in place …
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Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust should provide clinical risk assessment documentation, for use by workers, which enables them to clearly mark when a potential aspect of clinical risk has not been assessed, the reasons for this, and plans in place to ensure that the assessment is completed in a timely manner.
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Recommendation
Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust board should assure themselves that clinical staff are appropriately trained in the assessment and management of potential morbid jealousy.
Recommendation
The Trust should ensure that one of the functions of the Incident Co-ordination Group is to devise and agree a communications plan to ensure that appropriate service users and their families are communicated with in a co-ordinated way.
Recommendation
Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Trust should develop formal mechanisms to monitor compliance with clinical risk assessment training on an ongoing basis.
Recommendation
Hertfordshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust should conduct annual audit to ensure ongoing compliance with the standards outlined in their clinical risk assessment policy.