Project Description

As part of the additional funding provided by NHS England/Improvement to commission tailored outreach for people living with severe mental illness, Sheffield Mind was commissioned by Sheffield NHS Clinical Commissioning Group to work closely with GP practices to ensure that patients who are finding it difficult to access their annual physical health checks and/or their COVID19 vaccinations, can be offered practical support.

Download the case study, which includes details of the service, challenges, successes and future work.

Case Study_Sheffield CCG and Sheffield Mind

Information Sharing Agreement – Sheffield CCG and Sheffield Mind

My rights as a human being handout

Information Sharing Statement:

‘NHS Sheffield took the lead for the NHS on this project to help simplify the project ownership, provide specialist advice on matters of Information Governance, contracting and to ensure that the positive impact on the health of the people of Sheffield was maximised.  The CCG and Sheffield Mind went through the same rigorous due diligence that the CCG would do with any contract to ensure that value for money, safety for staff and patients and the security of information.  We all understand that GPs are often very busy with clinical commitments and finding time to have these discussions with partners can be time consuming and shouldn’t pull GPs away from their clinical commitments.

Sheffield Mind staff and volunteers are trained internally and the CCG is very happy with their training and oversight.  Sheffield Mind staff and volunteers can be some of the most appropriate people to help patients get the best care the NHS can provide. The process of contacting patients and making suitable arrangements for them to come in to a GP practice can be very time consuming and as part of our COVID response we wanted to make sure vulnerable groups were not disadvantaged by less time being available from practice staff to make these sorts of contacts and arrangements.  Each Practice was advised to let patients know and the GP practice provided basic contact details so patients could be contacted and then helped to get the right appointment and care they needed.  Patients were not under any obligation to engage with Sheffield Mind and no patients right to approach the GP practice directly were removed. The Information Governance implications were embedded in this project from the outset.’