The Ukrainian health check scheme is underway in Shropshire, Telford, and Wrekin

NHS Shropshire, Telford, and Wrekin Integrated Care Board (ICB) is one of many commissioning organisations to set up a new Ukrainian health check scheme using Calculating Quality Reporting Service (CQRS) Local.

With NHS England having set out an expectation and support for GP registration, and the management of the initial health needs for individuals and families coming to England fleeing the conflict in Ukraine, the ICB has introduced a local enhanced service which GP practices can sign up to and is supported by CQRS Local to simplify the claims process for completed health checks.

User friendly system

Berni Williams, Primary Care Lead, contracting for the ICB has worked closely with the Commissioning Support Unit (CSU) Collaborative to start using the claims processing system. 

“It’s really easy to use, we had initial support from their training team to set it up. We had a tour around the system and loved the fact that we would be able to get reports on activity.”

Berni has found CQRS Local to be a user-friendly systemand feedback from the practices has been positive.

“The practices can make claims, get reports easily and they can look back at previous months and track payments for the service they are delivering.”

Collaborative working

The ICB’s Ukrainian scheme also supports collaborative working across local agencies to ensure that people are provided with the services they need, such as local authority services.

“We have strong links with our local authorities who advise us of the numbers of people arriving and where they are likely to reside.”   

“Primary care team members from my team attend regular meetings with the local authority so that there is a joined-up approach because they have links with the communities.”

Churchmere Medical Group is one of three practices that is currently processing claims for the Ukrainian scheme through CQRS Local. Their practice manager has found it ‘easy and straightforward’ to submit and process claims.

Simple to set up

Since the scheme went live in September, all three practices have completed 20 health checks which is already making a difference to supporting the local community.

South Hermitage Surgery has also welcomed CQRS Local saying that ‘it’s a simple new platform for claiming payments for local services that takes very little time to set up’.

CQRS Local has taken a lot of the manual processes out of claims handling and processing for both commissioners and service providers.

The practices deliver other locally commissioned services, and to claim for their activity, they usually send in a spreadsheet.

“Whilst these would normally have to be collated by the primary care team and then sent to finance for processing, CQRS Local takes all the work out of that. The practice will go on to the system to make a claim for their activity and then the commissioner reviews it and it’s processed by finance who make the payment.”

“In our finance department, my colleague was ‘thrilled’ that we were going to start using CQRS Local, because it’s going to help her team with processing of paymentsand the reporting tool will also be useful.”

CQRS Local has been designed to support the management of local enhanced schemes between commissioners and primary care providers and will provide the mechanism to enable GP practices to make claims and receive payment.