payments are made to GP practices for the provision of an annual check. However given the smallness of the region (1.8 million people) and the data emerging from England and Wales, a major concern was to encourage the uptake of health checks and to monitor equity of provision across the region. The paper reports the findings from a three-year review that aimed to discover possible factors affecting the provision of health checks and the contribution that the appointment of a cadre of dedicated staff known as Health Facilitators could make to this. All were registered learning disability nurses and members of community intellectual disability teams. They were seconded to these new posts to liaise with GP practices. Method Country context Northern Ireland operates a National Health Service in common with other parts of the UK. General Practitioners (GPs) provide free primary health care to a panel of patients mostly resident in their locality. There were 351 GP practices in 2013/14 (353 in other years) with around 1,100 GPs employed in total. In 2013 the average number of patients per practice was around 5,200 of whom 3,800 are adults aged 20 years (based on figures provided by the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety: ). In addition Health Boards may contract with GPs to provide additional services to subgroups of patients such as those with diabetes under what is known as Directed Enhanced Service (DES).
payments are made to GP practices for the provision of an annual check. However given the smallness of the region (1.8 million people) and the data emerging from England and Wales, a major concern was to encourage the uptake of health checks and to monitor equity of provision across the region. The paper reports the findings from a three-year review that aimed to discover possible factors affecting the provision of health checks and the contribution that the appointment of a cadre of dedicated staff known as Health Facilitators could make to this. All were registered learning disability nurses and members of community intellectual disability teams. They were seconded to these new posts to liaise with GP practices. Method Country context Northern Ireland operates a National Health Service in common with other parts of the UK. General Practitioners (GPs) provide free primary health care to a panel of patients mostly resident in their locality. There were 351 GP practices in 2013/14 (353 in other years) with around 1,100 GPs employed in total. In 2013 the average number of patients per practice was around 5,200 of whom 3,800 are adults aged 20 years (based on figures provided by the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety: ). In addition Health Boards may contract with GPs to provide additional services to subgroups of patients such as those with diabetes under what is known as Directed Enhanced Service (DES).
Optimising_the_uptake_of_health_checks_JID_McConkey_Taggart_%26_Kane_2015.docx