Practice staff in the UK’s worst affected pandemic areas are likely to get regular COVID-19 testing, it was announced yesterday. The move came as Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the new three tier system – with Merseyside placed in the highest risk category and its pubs and restaurants closed. Large areas of the north and…

Practices will be able to get additional stocks of flu vaccine for November, the government has announced. They have been given access to a stock of eight million extra vaccines. The government has set a target of vaccinating 30 million people but this has run into trouble because of vaccine shortages – leading to practices…

However positive you try to be, however hard you try to motivate morale across the practice and however hard you work to try and keep patients happy, there’s no escaping the fact that 2020 has been extremely challenging for practice managers. COVID-19 has turned the world on its head, making an already stressful, difficult sector…

Patients are facing delays for non-urgent blood tests because of a shortage of reagents caused by problems in a new warehouse. The problems stem from NHS reliance on pharmaceutical company Roche, which has had problems operating a new automated warehouse in Sussex. According to reports last night, the problems could take several weeks to solve.…

The NHS lost nearly 100 practices last year as experienced GPs continued to quit the profession, it has been revealed. The reduction in numbers was similar to previous years, bringing an end to increasing rates of closures, according to an investigation by Pulse magazine. The numbers reflect the retirement of senior GPs and difficulties in…

Practice teams required to support care homes could help them learn to use early warning scores for patients developing acute illnesses, according to a new analysis. The study, in the British Journal of General Practice yesterday, was based on research in care homes in the north of England. Its timing is relevant as practices and…

Sometimes I feel like I must be Bobby Ewing from the 80s’ American soap opera ‘Dallas’. If you’re too young to remember, after a particularly bad few months, when during the storyline he’d actually died, the viewer was taken back to a scene in the shower where, thankfully, the last few months had all been…