You may suffer from one or more long term (‘chronic’) condition. The principles of care are the same: for you and your healthcare professionals to work in partnership to monitor your condition and to pay attention to your lifestyle to maximise your capabilities and protect yourself from future problems.
Research shows us the best ways to treat long term conditions and mostly they are well understood and somewhat predictable. We use the best current evidenced guidelines to plan programmes of care and will call you up every year on your birth month (or before) to carry out essential checks and set targets for the year ahead. We should give you a personal health plan so you know how best to care for yourself, how often we’ll need to see you and what other checks may be required. We should point you to resources to learn more about your condition.
Many long term conditions overlap in their care requirements – for instance diabetes and ischaemic heart disease share many criteria – so we’ll try and and combine your long term condition checks to save you multiple visits.
Usually you will need some blood tests or physical checks such as BP or respiratory checks with the Healthcare Assistant or Nurse then will need to see one of the Nurses or Doctors for a consultation depending on our protocols.
We sometimes send a questionnaire to answer in advance and return to us by a secure service (by PATCHS or AccuRx). This makes the whole process more efficient for you.