Interface
What is ‘Interface’?
Each day, general practice interacts with many health and social care organisations to provide effective patient care. This point where organisations meet is commonly known as the ‘Interface’. However, our research and national documentation shows that GP practices spend a significant amount time overcoming difficulties when interacting with other health and social care organisations. In Humberside, the cost to GPs alone (not the wider practice workforce) is around £4,000,000 per year. These difficulties include, but are not limited to:
- Poor communication e.g. discharge
- Difficulties making referrals/accessing services for their patients
- Shared Care
- Being asked to action other providers’ results
- Being asked to provide fit notes
- Being asked to make onward referrals
- Being asked to arrange investigations for other providers
How can we support you?
Humberside LMCs have a dedicated workstream for supporting practices whenever they experience interface difficulties. You can report your difficulties or queries to us and we will investigate them for you. We have strong links with Place and the ICB, providers, and other stakeholders which means that we are often able to resolve the issue. We also provide progress updates to you. By doing this for you, it reduces the burden of resolving the interface difficulties for you and your practice and helps us address any wider issues for GPs across Humberside.
Please send your interface queries via our online form or by email to humberside.lmcgroup@nhs.net.
Most common Interface
Difficulties in Humberside
We keep detailed records of the interface difficulties you send and can therefore create our own themes about what interface difficulties you most commonly encounter. In 2023, the top five interface difficulties in Humberside were:
Poor communication (27% of queries)
Difficulty making referrals (12% of queries)
Onward referral requests (10% of queries)
Shared care – 8% of queries (9% of queries)
Inappropriate prescribing requests (8% of queries)
What are we doing about this?
The information you provide will be dealt with both on an individual and strategic basis. Working groups and other initiatives have been set up to tackle some of the most prevalent problems across our area. For example, as a result of the difficulties you have reported with A & G, we’ve been able to work with secondary care colleagues to co-create a working group that aims to enable GPs and Consultants to get the most out of A & G. This group includes professionals from across Humberside.
Our Strategy
In 2023 the LMC created an interface strategy to address the needs of general practice. Read more on our interface strategy.
