The sun is out, the winter bugs are fading away and our thoughts turn to this Seasons ABC: AI, Beach fit and Climate change.
Artificial intelligence is all pervasive in the news and on the internet, and we are embracing the power of this transformative technological revolution. The innovations section has details of our latest forays into “the world of complex artificial intelligence computing systems to harness their power to leverage our resources to empower and enable our patients”, (or if we strip out the Silicon Valley Management Speak, the new programmes will make your interactions with the surgery easier, quicker and ultimately better, please take part in the survey)
Beach Fit, If you have tried the diet and exercise advice of earlier issues and are struggling to make headway with getting into that swim suit, and have thought about medication to help you, weight loss injections are everywhere in the news:
- the Good – there are even more effective medications on the way and they seem to help reduce cardiovascular and may cancer risk, and some are in tablet form;
- the Bad (news) – these medications will be available in general practice soon, but only if very strict criteria are met, see public health news;
- the Ugly (or fraudulent) – the internet and social media are awash with counterfeit medications, and people have died – so buyer be very weary, if you are thinking about using these, always use a reputable pharmacy if you are going to buy these medications.
Climate change, yes it’s Summer, after what felt like at least 6 months of continuous rain, a warm dry spring and dry weather has meant a bad hay fever season, dust and atmospheric pollution has increased breathing problems, and the hotter weather will increase your change of heat exhaustion. See our advice for surviving Summer.
Public Health initiatives:
Cancer Screening:
There are no new cancer or screening initiatives this month, but we urge you to make sure that you make use of the quieter summer months to get your usual cancer screening appointments booked on time. We encourage our female patients to get their cervical screening booked when called. We have increased capacity available at the Station Plaza, you can contact the team on 01424 884410. We have extended access appointments for working women’s convenience on Thursday evenings and some Saturdays at the surgery and Station Plaza also offer out of office hours appointments.
NHS Checks:
If you are over 40 and not had an NHS check to look for diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, it will be worth contacting the surgery for this 5 yearly screen, as we have been told by our NHS masters to limited capacity for these, it really is a case of “first come, first diagnosed, don’t miss out”. You can also get your blood pressure checked at the pharmacy.
The weight of the nation.
It is no surprise that with the food manufacturers churning out a seemingly infinite supply of affordable, tasty, ultra-processed food that the nation is struggling with its weight. The Global problem of obesity and weight related diseases has reached epidemic proportions. As many as 11% of women between 18 and 60 are using weight loss medications to try to turn this around. Obesity increases your risk of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, but also some of the most common cancers, and dementia.
We are losing this fight against fat, but for those that really have tried everything, the big guns of “Big Pharma” are repurposing their arsenal of diabetic injections to join this fight. The most effective of the current crop is Mounjaro, and this will be available on a limited roll out programme in general practice shortly. The initial criteria will be very strict. We have included the slides from a presentation to our clinicians about this for your information.
If you think you may fit the criteria and would be interested in these medications, please take our survey. We have no idea how much demand there will be for these medications amongst our patients and we need to know from you what that demand will be to be considered for these medications, so that we can plan for an assessment and monitoring programme for this.
Weight management survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/XZKDPVY
Climate Change – Surviving Summer:
The big ones are:
Hay fever
It’s not a surprise, it happens every year, please order your tablets, nasal sprays and eye drops now, and be ready.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/hay-fever/
Sun Burn
The weather is a constant source of conversation and complaint, but interspersed with the showers, we do get surprisingly strong sun at this time of year. Please make sure you have sun screen on between 11 am and 3 pm and wear a hat to keep the sun off your head, particularly if your hair is thin or short and ears are exposed. Bucket hats are very fashionable, even princess Ann has a selection. Sunburn damages the skin and predisposes to skin cancer.
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/seasonal-health/sunscreen-and-sun-safety/
Heat stroke
After losing their winter fuel allowance and freezing through the winter, our older patients, (and small children) are really susceptible to heat stroke. As the weather warms up, stay out of the sun in the middle of the day, stop the sun heating up the house/flat by shutting curtains and creating air flow by opening windows on opposite sides of the building. Keeps drinking non-alcoholic drinks. Heat kills, please get speedy advice if you think you are developing heat stroke or heat exhaustion.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/heat-exhaustion-heatstroke/
Breathing issues:
Hot, dry, high pressure weather fronts often have a very high air pollution index, please make sure you have your inhalers and avoid areas you know will be polluted such as busy roads.
Accidental Burns:
BBQs and Burns – it’s not just the burnt burgers and uncooked chicken you need to avoid at BBQs, keep small children away from the BBQ and outside cooking appliance, fire pits etc. These get extremely hot and can cause major burns if a child touches the outside of a BBQ. Hot weather is so rare that they will not be as familiar with this type of naked flame or hot coals cooking, as they are of the kitchen cooker. Take extra care with lighter fluid, especially in hot weather, as it evaporates and NEVER use anything that is not specifically designed for BBQ’s. Remember cigarettes with petrol can explode. If you do sustain a burn, put ice on it immediately, and seek medical advice immediately or 999, do not stop cooling the burn down until it has been assessed by a medical professional.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/burns-and-scalds/
Dehydration:
Dehydration can occur with or without heat stoke. In order to lower your temperature, you have to be able to sweat, and this needs to evaporate to cool the skin and take fluid out of the body. Babies and small children do not sweat effectively, they may need tepid sponging, or a supervised paddling pool, and definitely keep out of direct sun light, and offer regular drinks (and even ice lollies.) The elderly are also at increased risk.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/dehydration/
Up Coming Events:
Men’s Health Week – 9-15 June 2025
Led by the Men’s Health Forum to raise awareness of preventable health issues and encourage men and boys to seek professional advice for health-related problems, including mental health problems and suicide risk. This is really important, men outnumber women in the risk of death by suicide by nearly 4:1. The rates of suicide annually are around 17-20 per 100,000 men. Suicide is the most prevalent cause of death for young men aged 18-35, outstripping deaths from road traffic accidents and violence. If you have a friend or relative who may be at risk, please contact a health care professional, or the Samaritans on 116 123 day or night, or in an emergency 999.
https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/
https://www.menshealthforum.org.uk/mhw/
Learning Disability week – 16-22 June 2025
Raising awareness about the issues that are important to people with a learning disability and their families and carers.
https://www.mencap.org.uk/learningdisabilityweek
Teen Life – a local programme supporting families who have children living with Autism.
Practice News:
Kelly and Vicky our PCN podiatrists, now have regular podiatry appointments on Fridays at Harold Road site, they can look at all of your foot issues for Adults over 18.
Fabiola our pre-registration pharmacist is with us for a few months, she will be running some surgery medication review clinics shortly.
Jayne Collins has joined our nursing team, along with Suzeni Halfacre, who is back with us on a Monday.
Sonya Hoyler has joined our Nurse practitioner team.
Dr Chris Udenze has finished his temporary stint with us. We wish him well with his book launch.
Congratulations to Lou and Paisley on their recent deliveries. We look forward to welcoming their new additions to the surgery in about 16 year’s time for “work experience”.
We had a quick catch up a few days ago on what happened at the regional PPG forum who met in January, (the minutes from this and the slides are on the Hill surgery web site) and they had a sneak preview of our new site.
https://www.thehillsurgery.nhs.uk/patient-group/about-our-ppg/
Innovations:
AI (and clever computer algorithms) has arrived.
All of our clinicians now have access to Tandem, an AI scribe (like having a robot secretary) taking the notes, and integrating straight into our main clinical system. If you have access to notes you will have noticed the quality has improved (doctors are not known for their legible writing or spelling). It also creates your referral letters and other documents at the touch of a button. Watch this space as they continue their development partnership with AccuRx.
AccuRx the online request and SMS messaging system, or “digital front door” has been a triumph, over 50% of appointment requests are now coming in on line directly, and this has reduced the call volume to around 250 calls a day (down from a peak of 800). This means that those without the internet, can get though more quickly to the reception desk, to have their details down into the AccuRx request form. The cancellation list is often zero and most requests can be accommodated within 5 days for pre booked appointments.
See survey results:
https://www.thehillsurgery.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/757/2025/05/Survey-results-April-2025.pdf
5,000 of our patients will be getting links from Medlink the automated recall system for chronic disease annual review check-ups. If you have Asthma, COPD, Heart disease, Diabetes or hypertension, you will be receiving a text or email in your birth month, to invite you to fill in an online form about how you are, and to submit readings that you can take at home, such as blood pressure and weight, and a request to book a blood test. When we have all of the results back, specialist teams of clinicians at the surgery will review their specialist area of the response, and if everything is going well, you may not need to book an appointment. You may need a phone consultation, or we may invite you in for a face to face appointment. This is a much more organised and time efficient way of getting several specialists to review their particular area of expertise for you, without having to book an appointment to see each of them. It will streamline our information gathering and review process (hopefully) and reduce any unnecessary appointments that waste patient’s time. We are still getting used to this and will survey you later to get your feedback once a few patients have completed the whole review process.
Coming soon, the interactive telephone call answering “bot”. This is still in final development and testing, and will be operational as soon as it’s programmed. We hope this is in the next few days. This should stop call waiting times all together, if you are a little patient with the options. We may need to still iron out the options (we have already stripped out a lot of the unnecessary ones that came with the software package) when we see how it works, but fingers crossed. We are going to need short, specific, constructive feedback on how this is working in many situations, please don’t send in 10 pages of commentary about how dreadful it is, we need specifics to feed back to the software engineers to tweak it. Try the feedback link:
https://www.thehillsurgery.nhs.uk/patient-group/patient-feedback/
Access Survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NK36XFH
GPautomate or LabBot, seems to have settled down, if you have received any confusing messages about your blood tests recently, please let us know.
Automatic Registrations or RegBot seems to be running smoothly, if any new patients have had any issues, please let us know.
And finally, the ICB local region health news:
We still have an ICB for the moment, NHSE are looking to merge ICBs to reduce the number from 42 to about 30. Sussex ICB has been told to loose around 50% of its costs as we reported in the last newsletter, we are still not sure at this time how that will affect front line healthcare.
https://www.sussex.ics.nhs.uk/nhs-sussex-news-11-april-2025
https://www.sussex.ics.nhs.uk/nhs-sussex-news-17-april-2025/
https://www.sussex.ics.nhs.uk/nhs-sussex-news-25-april-2025/
https://www.sussex.ics.nhs.uk/nhs-sussex-news-2-may-2025/
https://www.sussex.ics.nhs.uk/nhs-sussex-news-9-may-2025/
https://www.sussex.ics.nhs.uk/nhs-sussex-news-16-may-2025/
https://www.sussex.ics.nhs.uk/nhs-sussex-news-23-may-2025/
https://www.sussex.ics.nhs.uk/nhs-sussex-news-30-may-2025/
International General Practice and Health News:
Once again, even if some patients struggle to contact a General Practice for an appointment, the UK seems to have more access to general practitioners than our nearest neighbour. France is really suffering from GP shortages, especially in the rural heart lands where they have less than a third of the GPs that we have in the UK. Even the “most doctored” areas have less GPs per 100,000 patients than the US and UK. If you are venturing across the channel this summer, remember to take sufficient medications on holiday.
While we are thinking about medical supplies, please remember insect repellent when visiting Europe. Tiger mosquitoes from Africa are endemic in most departments of France, and carry Dengue, Zika and Chikungunya. Tropical diseases without the hassle of visiting the tropics.
While we are considering where the safest destination to travel to is, remember the perennial tick. Although Lyme disease is uncommon in the UK compared to Europe and North America, Ticks carrying Crimean-Congo fever have been found in France, and the disease is already in Spain.
And finally, who can possibly forget the “RFK Jr special” Measles outbreak in Texas, please book your immunisations in good time before travelling, if you are not immunised.
Staycations are starting to look quite attractive, and we can even arrange your routine medical reviews and booster vaccinations to keep you occupied.
