CWIC Direct

What is CWIC Direct?

CWIC Direct is a service that’s run by the East Lothian Health and Social Care Partnership (ELHSCP) and separate to Riverside Medical Practice. CWIC Direct is based in the Musselburgh Primary Care Centre, next door to Riverside Medical Practice.

The CWIC Direct team includes advanced nurse practitioners, nurse practitioners, Physician’s Associates and GPs who provide assessment, diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of new health concerns, as well as flare-ups of existing conditions. They can prescribe medications for you, arrange tests and make referrals.

If you’re assessed by CWIC Direct and you’re going to collect a prescription they’ve arranged for you, please collect it before 5pm. The Riverside team unfortunately can’t help after this time with prescriptions arranged by CWIC Direct.

Who can call CWIC Direct?

Any Riverside patient aged 12 years and over can use the service, unless they’re pregnant or housebound.

What can CWIC Direct help with?

CWIC Direct can provide assessment, diagnosis and treatment of a wide range of new health concerns, as well as flare-ups of existing conditions.

What can CWIC Direct not help with?

Although CWIC Direct can help if you have a flare-up of an existing condition, you should call the Practice rather than CWIC Direct if you need to speak to someone about the routine ongoing management of an existing condition. CWIC Direct also can’t help with:

What will happen when I call CWIC Direct?

Calls will be answered by a CWIC Direct clinician, who will assess whether it’s something CWIC Direct can help with – and if so, if the health issue can be managed via a phone appointment or in a face-to-face appointment with a CWIC Direct clinician at the Musselburgh Primary Care Centre.

All details of the consultation will be recorded in the patient’s medical record at the Practice.

Why is this change being made?

CWIC have been providing care to patients registered with Riverside, Tranent Medical Practice, Harbours Medical Practice and Inveresk Medical Practice for a number of years, but previously patients had to call their GP Practice to be booked an appointment with the CWIC team.

The East Lothian Health and Social Care Partnership have decided to move to the new CWIC Direct model and we hope that this will allow them to establish whether providing their services in this way brings benefits to patients, when compared to the original system. We hope and expect that this assessment will be a rigorous one and that the results are shared with GP Practices and patients, in a transparent way.

As our patients will know, the legally enforceable Contract and SLA we agreed with NHS Lothian in 2018 committed ELHSCP (via the CWIC service) to provide a guaranteed minimum number of same-day appointments to Riverside patients each week. This was agreed in recognition of high levels of patient demand in Musselburgh – and helped to close the gap between the funding that Riverside receives to provide care to our patients, and the higher level of funding given to other local GP Practices.

With CWIC Direct, this guaranteed number of weekly appointments is lost and our concern is that CWIC Direct will – either immediately or over the longer-term – lead to a reduction in the amount of appointments available to Riverside patients each day. Ultimately, any reduction in service levels is not good for our patients and will lead to access to healthcare becoming more challenging. We hope of course that this will not be the case.

We hope that CWIC Direct proves to be a success and know that the CWIC Direct team provide excellent care to patients.

How can I provide feedback about CWIC Direct?

If patients have any feedback or complaints about CWIC Direct, we would ask them to send this to the NHS Lothian Patient Experience team, rather than to us at the Practice.