So, the new year is well and truly upon us … well, actually it’s nearly forgotten now! Or it would have been except for our “Christmas do”, which we held in late January.

This was another first as we held a joint “do” between the two conjoined practices, which I think caused some to be cautious, but it all proved good in the end. This was mostly because some of the doctors played the fool (there’s always one or two!), but of course this always gets things moving.

Following the change of computer system last year in practice A, there was a lot of bad feeling among the staff, as they couldn’t see why we had changed system and caused them all this extra work.

We decided to do some serious smoothing and went for booking a pamper company to come to the surgery and let staff choose from their range of massages or manicures/pedicures. I have to say this went down very well – there were more thanks received after this than after the Christmas presents! So a few brownie points gained there.

This must have worked well with the staff as we had a full turnout for the staff away day. This is previously unheard of – there’s usually always someone who can’t make it. It’s amazing what a bit of nail varnish can do (and that was just the male staff!)

Well, now all the frivolities are over it’s back to the real world of QOF visits, QMAS and DES. The five new DES have been officially offered to us, so it’s a good job that we started preparation work for these way back last year.

I’m sure keeping track of all the DES, NES and LES, not to mention PBC and the deadlines, reporting and financial claims, is far more difficult and time consuming than IOS ever was – notwithstanding all the different ways of claiming this used to entail. And the “new” contract was supposed to be less bureaucratic!

Seriously, has anyone come up with a magic way of keeping track of all these? I used to use Outlook very successfully, but now that is connected to NHS Mail things get lost with monotonous regularity – and that’s before the next change. Still, I always look on the positive side, so I’m looking forward to the change coming to NHS Mail (no, I don’t want to hear from you if you have already changed!).

That’s enough now, must get back to DES and LES …