Summary
City centre practice is praised for its work to identify and treat homeless women with syphilis.
A city centre GP practice has been recognised in a national strategy for its healthcare services for vulnerable women.
Urban Village Medical Practice, in Ancoats, features in the Renewed Women’s Strategy for England, which was released earlier this month (April).
The strategy includes more than 100 actions and commitments by the government to improve all women’s healthcare.
A case study highlighting Urban Village’s integrated approach to enhanced screening and management of syphilis infection in Manchester features as part of ‘Action 85: we will improve support for women sleeping rough’.
The government has committed to publishing an outreach toolkit and a single homelessness and complex needs toolkit to support councils to deliver effective services, featuring best practice on service design.
Urban Village has enhanced contracts to deliver a homeless healthcare service and contraceptive and sexual health services.
As part of this work, the team offers sexual health screening to homeless patients and identified a 44 per cent year-on-year increase in positive syphilis tests.
They worked with secondary care teams to facilitate consultant-led treatment of syphilis in primary care and, as a result, were able to treat 91 per cent of individuals who may not have otherwise accessed screening or treatment.
Kay Keane, Practice Manager at Urban Village Medical Practice, said: “Being able to respond in this way comes from a positive relationship with our commissioners.
“There’s a shared understanding of the needs of marginalised groups, and our team at Urban Village are constantly recognising and responding to those needs in practice.
“That, alongside the flexibility to adapt services quickly, has allowed us to design care around the patient, rather than expecting patients to fit around services.”
You can read the full case study on the PCB website, and the full strategy on the Gov.UK website.
