GP Practices
In Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes we have 93 GP practices. If you’ve been unwell for more than 48 hours and need medical help, you can book an appointment with a healthcare professional at your GP practice. When you contact the GP practice, the questions you are asked may seem intrusive, but they are designed to help guide you to the best clinical person to help you with your condition. This might be a GP, Nurse, Clinical Pharmacist, Physicians Associate or Paramedic.
Our GP practices are working differently to help you get the care you need. GP practices provide many ways you can access their services including:
- on-line consultations
- telephone appointments
- video appointments
- face-to-face appointments
You can also use the NHS App to securely access some services available from your GP Practice on a smartphone or tablet. To find out more about the NHS App visit: https://www.nhs.uk/nhs-app/
If you need a routine appointment in the evening or weekend, your practice has the option, where agreed appropriate, to book you an appointment with the ‘Enhanced Access’ service.
Primary Care Networks
We also have 23 Primary Care Networks (PCNs) in BLMK. PCNs are a group of general practices who work together within an area based on GP registered patient lists. PCNs build on existing primary care services to help enable provision of proactive, personalised, integrated health and social care for people, close to home. Working together with other services helps to provide people with better access to care. For more information about PCNs including a short animation visit the NHS website.
Medical Examiner Services
The medical examiner process has been in place in the acute trusts for the last few years . It has been a source of information for the bereaved and provided support for the doctors caring for the deceased. The process has reduced the number of death certificates rejected by the registrars and also reduced the number of coroners referrals. It allows concerns about care and treatment to be escalated in a structured, timely way and for feedback (positive or negative) to be given to the teams involved.
The next step is to review community deaths, the medical examiner teams in Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes are starting to establish the process for doing this. We have designed a leaflet to be given to the bereaved family members or friends to explain the service. Download Introduction to the Medical Examiner Service
Further information can be found at NHS England » Information for primary care on extending medical examiner scrutiny to non-coronial deaths in the community or by emailing Dr Jane Wale, Lead Medical Examiner for Milton Keynes ([email protected] ) or Dr Robin White, Lead Medical Examiner for Bedfordshire and Luton ([email protected])