Mid Ulster GP Federation Quarterly Newsletter - Spring 2026
- Northern Federation Support Unit
- 2 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 6 hours ago
Dear Mid Ulster Staff/Practices,
We are delighted to publish another Mid Ulster quarterly newsletter. Hopefully you will find much of the content informative and useful.
We welcome any feedback or thoughts with regards to our newsletters, so please feel free to contact us.
Northern GP Federation Support Unit Update (NFSU)
Keeping you up to date with our team.
Feel free to reach out to any of the NFSU team supporting the four Northern GP Federations (Antrim Ballymena, Causeway, East Antrim, and Mid Ulster).
➡️ Check out our NEW bios to put faces to names and see who does what:
Got a question or want to know more about our work? Please get in touch. We have recently updated our bios following a couple of recent additions to our team
NFSU Project Update
Rachael Elliott & Hannah Wilson - Project Coordinators
Medical Admin Academy
We are delighted to be continuing to deliver our Medical Admin Academy, supporting individuals to develop their skills, knowledge, and confidence required to work in administrative roles within GP practices.
Following the continued success of our Medical Administration Training Academy, we are pleased to share some positive outcomes from recent cohorts:
⭐ 87% completion rate
⭐ 90%+ of participants rated the training as excellent
⭐ 81% of completers progressed to receiving an offer of employment
We are continuing to monitor opportunities to deliver the academy within the Mid Ulster area, and would very much welcome the opportunity to bring this programme locally in the future.
In the meantime, we would encourage practices to share any current or upcoming medical administration vacancies with us. We are happy to circulate these opportunities to participants from our previous cohorts, and to those progressing through future programmes, who may be willing and able to travel (***Sometimes participants live on bordering council areas).
If you would like to share a vacancy or find out more, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Antrim & Newtownabbey LMP (See more)
Earlier this year, we delivered the academy in partnership with Antrim & Newtownabbey Labour Market Partnership (LMP). The programme ran over eight weeks and provided participants with training in key areas such as patient communication, terminology, confidentiality & GDPR, clinical systems, and the day-to-day operations of working within general practice.
The programme received strong interest from the local community, with 64 expressions of interest received. A total of 13 participants commenced the academy, with 11 successfully completing the programme, representing an 85% completion rate. Participant feedback was very positive, with 91% overall quality of training as excellent. Encouragingly, several participants have already secured employment within GP practices, with others actively progressing through recruitment processes.
Mid & East Antrim LMP (See more)
Furthermore, we are delighted to share that funding has been secured to run another Medical Admin Academy in partnership with Mid & East Antrim LMP, with the next cohort due to begin in May 2026 in Ballymena.
The upcoming academy will once again provide participants with practical training into working within general practice, alongside opportunities to engage with healthcare professionals and develop employability skills.
We would be grateful if you would kindly display the flyer in your practice.
➡️ Want to know more about our Medical Admin Academy? Watch the below video.
General Practice Pharmacy Success!⭐
Two of our lead GPPs, Claire & Mary, pictured below attended a Leaders Forum in London last week to present their COPD cardiopulmonary risk reduction project and to learn from others sharing the latest developments in respiratory care. This trip was funded by Astra Zeneca who supported the Federations with this project.
📖Federation Education
Dalriada Urgent Care (DUC) – Protected Learning Time Dates
Protected Learning Time (PLT) for 2026/2027 has now been aligned to support forward planning of education events.
The dates where DUC is scheduled are:
· Wed 20th May 2026
· Wed 23rd September 2026
· Wed 18th November 2026
· Wed 24th February 2027
GPs will be contacted in advance to confirm availability for cover. Early confirmation of GP availability to ensure these education sessions can proceed as planned and to support effective planning across Federations.
See More for printable flyer >
🚑 Medical Cover Update - We need YOUR help!
The ongoing challenge around FedEd activity is the medical cover for practice closure. You will be aware that a training day in February was cancelled at short notice. Dalriada were unable to obtain any cover despite significant efforts.
We would like to secure four afternoons each year with Dalriada cover to permit practice closures for multi-disciplinary learning events, further external events such as Hot Topics, or to facilitate in-house training.
This will require medical cover for Dalriada. Closure is usually on a Trust-wide basis and can be run with 4 GPs alongside ancillary staff. We are looking at ways this can be secured so that training plans can be made with confidence. The Dalriada cover is a paid session.
We require 16 sessions to cover the year.
➡️ If you would be willing to commit to doing one Wednesday afternoon session in the year it would very helpful and enable our program to run.
📩 Please contact Hannah Wilson - hannah.wilson@northernfsu.co.uk If you can help!
❤️ CPR Training/Financial Support
We are pleased to share some exciting news for all our GP practices. Your Federation will be providing some financial support for CPR Training for the next year. Further details regarding this will be circulated very shortly via email, so please keep an eye out for this communication. Thank you to those who responded to the Member Practice survey in January as this allowed us to gather our research in this area.
Economies of Scale Project
We continue to listen to feedback from Practices and work closely with local suppliers, strengthening our partnerships to support cost savings wherever possible.
Accurx Update
We recently contacted all Northern practices enrolled in the AccuRx Federation contract regarding upcoming renewals, due at the start of May 2026. Our Federation contract will generate almost £60k in savings for Northern Practices for 2026/2027 alone.
In the Northern area, over 85% EMIS practices are currently signed up and finding AccuRx extremely useful in their Practice. We are also mindful of the few remaining upcoming Vision to EMIS migrations. If your practice is considering joining AccuRx or if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to: Rachael.elliott@northernfsu.co.uk
Click Here for previous Webinar
Previous webinar held on 4th March 2026 can still be watched here – (products, package, pricing, upcoming developments) The session includes a Q& A and will be ideal for Practices who is/has migrated from Vison to Emis. Economies of Scale | Northern Federation
Click Here for Approx. Current Pricing (subject to change depending on patient list size)
Modules | AccuRx Pricing +Vat Per patient | Federation Pricing +Vat Per patient |
Bronze (Sms plus, Batch messaging and appointment reminders, florey questionnaires) | 43p | 24p |
Booking | 29p | 26p |
Patient Triage | 25p | 19p |
The Regional NI contract can save practices up to 44% on modules.
Take a look at the discounts available to you on our website through our supplier partnerships
CLICK HERE ➡️Economies of Scale | Northern Federation
Contact us
As always if you have any questions for the FSU, please do not hesitate to contact the Federation Support Unit on info@northernfsu.co.uk or 028 9620 8333
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