In this section:
Webinar recordings and slides
Below are some recordings and slides from briefings held by the ICB for practices.
Prioritisation guidance
To continue to support practices to prioritise pathology tests, our team has updated the guidance issued last week. You can find the updated guidance here.
The guidance particularly provides more information about pathology around cancer treatment.
Potential harms monitoring guidance
We have developed and updated the guidance for raising quality alerts and patient safety issues after constructive feedback from primary care and the LMC. The pack has been updated and on page 3 of the pack, you can find a link to the form where you can raise quality and patient safety issues arising from the Synnovis Cyber attack. The guidance is here.
Medicines guidance
To support people who take medication that requires regular blood tests, the medicines optimisation team are working with GPs and specialists to develop clinical guidance that applies across primary and secondary care. This is being released in batches as it is developed. You can find the current guidance here.
To help communicate the impact of the incident on the care of your patients, the following may be helpful to use when asked queries by patients: “Your regular blood testing for prescribed medication may be reduced or paused as a result of the cyber attack in South East London which is affecting blood testing capacity. Any reduction or pausing of blood testing will be considered by your specialist or your GP on an individual basis. This will ensure people with the greatest need are prioritised for testing and that you can safely continue taking your medication. If your regular blood tests are delayed, your specialist or GP will ensure you are called for a blood test at the earliest possible time.
If you have any questions, please discuss with your healthcare professional.”
Financial support
We recognise the impact that this will have for our practices in relation to capacity, workforce and provision of care. To ensure we support practices as well as we are able, we have secured financial support (20 June 2024) for practices.
Once Synnovis has communicated the cancellation of these tests to general practice, general practice will need to undertake a clinical review of each patient to ascertain the impact of the cancellation and the follow-up actions required to minimise risk to the patient.
Accurx Fragments
We are aware that practices have had to inform and notify patients of the recent Synnovis incident which may have involved utilising Accurx fragments. Please continue to use this method of contacting patients if appropriate but at the same time record the number used for this purpose during this period for future reference. A local template named Synnovis Incident could be used. Click here to access the webpage showing how to create the template.
Semen analysis request form.