Hopefully with public holidays and 'individual responsibility time', you' ve all had something of a break from work...so now that those 10 minutes have passed, let's dive in, shall we?

Despite the issues in supply chains and transport caused by the Omicron outbreak, we were fortunate enough to run our first paediatric COVID clinic this week. These clinics are on a rotation and will occur Mondays to Thursdays, with the next clinic being on Tuesday, 18th January. We ran a 'test' clinic for children of our GPs and friends, and it looks that based on the efficiency and demographics for 'early adopters', we'll be able to increase the volume of these clinics from 30 to 60 patients per week, with the capacity for ad hoc vaccinations and some doses in reserve should supply chains cause headaches in the future.

The roster is accessible from Teams, with more dates to be added from March onwards. To view in full, click the button below:

Boosters! Boosters! Boosters!

At the same time as our paediatric doses arriving, our adult booster doses also came this week, with the first clinic scheduled for Friday, 14th January. These clinics will run every  Friday from now until the next variant, and then until the end of time (citation needed).

Staffed by Aimee Martinez and Julie Honeychurch, these clinics will hopefully be able to manage the bulk of our booster doses throughout the year. However, similarly to the paediatric clinics, we'll be labelling patients as 'Vax Candidates', meaning that they've indicated they are eligible for their booster at the time of their appointment, and meet all other screening criteria (the 'flag' is the mask icon: see below).

This will hopefully allow us to bolster our clinics by providing doses to patients who may have to otherwise wait or find accessing services through hubs difficult.

The item number for administering a Booster dose is 93666, and should be billed in tandem with a 93644.

How to Covid in 2022...

Because the sheer volume of patients presenting with COVID has overwhelmed the RPA virtual services, we've been tasked with assisting/co-ordinating outpatient care (also due to an unfortunate press conference in which patients were told to call their GP if they had tested positive via RAT for COVID).

To that end, we've implemented the following:

• Updating the 'Contact Us' form: allowing patients to notify us of their positive results (either from PCR or RAT). As a workflow, GPs are then able to access this message (sent to them) and based on the risk profile, either respond to message with a template SMS (PATIENT RECORD - COVID POSITIVE Received), directing them to NSW Health's guidelines for managing COVID at home and whom to contact if their condition worsens, OR the GP can contact the patient directly via Telehealth if circumstances (and time) permit. You can see how to send the SMS by viewing the clip below:

• CSMP Virtual: in tandem with both Remote Desktop and Alcatel's Rainbow software, GPs are able to run an equivalent 'virtual' clinic from home when and if they need to isolate as a close contact. Rainbow allows you to use your own phone as if it were part of the CSMP network (i.e. no need to mask numbers, as your phone 'calls' from the CSMP main phone number. On the patient-side, patients seeking telehealth appointments ONLY can then book into CSMP Virtual A, allowing GPs to keep working and not reduce their capacity to only a handful of 'already booked for telehealth' patients if they need to cancel in-person sessions. Rainbow is available in desktop and app versions. To download for iPhone/iPad, click here, for Android, click here

For more information on either of these initiatives, please get in touch!

(Edit: Please do NOT ask patients to email reception@csmp.com.au - there have been a number of ransomware/spamming attempts made on this address. If you need a patient to send you information/forms/images, please ask them to complete the 'Contact Us' form on the practice website!)

To help allow patients without smartphones to access scripts as well as those on restricted medications, we have updated the online referral and script portal with the option to eScript to PHARMACY, rather than eScript to EMAIL (which has had issues of reliability for patients using hotmail or live.com addresses for eScripts outside of consult).

Most of our patients on S8 medications will have the following in their demographics information to allow you to send the eScript to their pharmacy:

Other patients may need the pharmacy to be manually searched - if in doubt, please contact reception who have the FULL list of email addresses for pharmacies, which we are working to repopulate within Best Practice.

OVERSEAS PATIENTS: as a Medicare number is required for Best Practice to find a Health Identifier (the number required to send eScripts), we've been able to circumvent this by finding non-Medicare patients HI numbers fro their COVID vaccination certificates. If a patient is missing an HI number, please let admin know so we can add this number from their COVID certificate and enable eScripts for them!

• Secret Santa: if you participated this year, please collect your gift from The SHU ASAP!
• Closures: we'll be closed 26th January for the Australia Day public holiday
• Accreditation: has been moved to February, 2022!

And last but not least, a BIG 'welcome back' to Dr Julie Nguyen!

Julie will be back with us on Mondays and Fridays!