NHS Emails and Notification

22 June 2020

There are 2 updates below: –

1. NHSE Declarations

Following the publication of the NHSE SOP on the 17th of June. LOCSU have reviewed the request from NHSE Regional Teams for contractors to complete declarations.

IMPORTANTLY IT IS ACCEPTED THAT MANY CONTRACTORS MAY HAVE ALREADY COMPLETED AN ONLINE DECLARATION AND, IN THESE CASES NO FURTHER ACTION REQUIRED

The following advice supports the process moving forward with immediate effect.

LOCS should establish the following points to contractors.

• The SOP published on the 17th June is to be considered as an aide memoire / guidance
• Whilst It is recognised that completion of NHSE Regional Team questionnaires is not actually a contractual requirement, it is acknowledged that it will be helpful for regional offices to obtain an understanding of coverage across their regional footprint.
• The local area team need to recognise that in order to resume GOS services, practices will have to complete a risk assessment /checklist of some sort and it is the responsibility of each contractor to ensure that if they are resuming GOS services, they have undertaken an assessment and used their clinical judgement to risk manage their own transition.
• The questionnaire has not been designed as a performance tool.

Therefore, after establishing the above you can now advise members to say the following

Thank you for your helpful aide-memoire/checklist and support.  We can confirm that [PRACTICE NAME and ODS CODE}  is open from [DATE] in accordance with NHS England’s 17 June letter and SOP.

We have carried a risk assessment and are currently focusing on keeping our patients, staff and the public safe in line with College of Optometrist and ABDO guidance.

This way contractors can circumvent  the online questionnaires but still give the opening information that the area teams need.

2. NHS mail

Dear GOS Contractors,

NHS mail is the national secure email service for health and social care service providers, approved for transmission of patient data.

The accounts are provided free of charge and will enable you to communicate and collaborate securely with other practitioners across health and social care.

We are requesting all contractors to register for an NHSmail account to enable safe and secure communication, contractors with an existing NHSmail account are also encouraged to complete the form. The link below will take you to a website with a template to complete. The template is applicable on any device.

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=ggRtz7GGiE-MDDtN5MtALMPHR2CkIDJBvKYSsPysXllUREg1OVdXM1NORE01NzZUSzdRU1NON0VYTSQlQCN0PWcu

All the fields on the form must be completed otherwise the form will not be transmitted.

On completion, NHS Digital will get in touch with you directly with the information provided to go through the authentication process and set the accounts up, in most cases, applications will be processed within one working week of the application being received

BSA will be notified of all new accounts and existing nhs.net addresses via the form and will share these updates with us.

Please note that the application is to receive 1 x shared mailbox for the practice with 2 x individual nhs.net accounts. The need to complete the Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT) has been waivered until September 2020.

Limited number of accounts have been made available at this time therefore will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

Hopefully the above information is helpful.