Network Therapist Welcome Pack - New V1
Network Therapist Welcome Pack
We work in partnership with the NHS to provide mental and physical health services, work with the UK’s largest companies to help support their workforce and provide a full range of physiotherapy services to private customers.
Vita Health Group is an award-winning specialist for corporate Mental Health.
We provide people with Mental Health support and treatment through corporate organisations, government bodies, the NHS, and insurance groups.
Welcome
Welcome to Vita Health Group’s team of Network Therapists. We are delighted that you have joined us and look forward to working with you. As a Network Therapist you will be providing Vita Health Group (VHG) clients with one-to-one sessions either remotely or face to face, or both. You will be contributing to the important support that we provide to our clients, and we thank you in anticipation for this.
VHG works with a range of Providers, that consist of varying clients from their Occupational Health or Private Medical Insurance. These contracts have different requirements in relation to reports that are required for their clients. Some of our customers, such as private medical insurers, have legal regulations we must follow. If there are such requirements, you will be given specific guidance on these reports dependent upon the contracts you work with.
As a Network Therapist for VHG you will support our vision to be the UK’s Leading healthcare provider of best in class Physical and Mental Health Solutions. Our vision is underpinned by our values, where we behave in line with the following:
Leadership – We lead the way through innovation and continuous improvement.
People centred – We support, develop and value each other, so together we can make a difference.
Customer focused – We are passionate about going above and beyond for our customers.
Quality – We hold each other accountable and strive to deliver excellence.
Integrity – We treat each other with respect and honesty.
Key Contacts
|
Area (Purpose) |
Team |
|
Contact Details |
|
Risk |
Risk Duty Team |
Email Risk Duty team. This team operates in office hours only |
|
|
Clinical queries |
Clinical Advisory Team |
Clinical questions and queries, clinical work with patients. The team operates in office hours only |
https://vitahealthgroup.zohodesk.eu/portal/en/newticket and click Mental Health Clinical Team
|
|
Non-Clinical & Admin |
Admin Team |
Administrative or non-clinical enquiries, system guidance and invoicing queries. For ongoing manual session notes and invoices (for cases taken before the case management system went live) |
https://vitahealthgroup.zohodesk.eu/portal/en/newticket and click MH admin |
|
Joining the MH network |
Network Onboarding Team |
Enquires about working with us, joining & induction information, queries about contracts and fees. |
Network Clinical Advisory team
To support you in your role you will have access to an experienced Network Clinical Advisory Team comprised of Senior Psychological Therapists/Counsellors. The team will provide you with ongoing support, answering contractual queries and provide guidance. The clinical team may contact you regarding notes, reports and GP letters and any queries they may have regarding your clients. Please can you respond to these questions within 48 hours.
There is an expectation that you will be engaging in regular clinical supervision independently. This should follow the standards established by your accrediting organisation/s (e.g. BABCP, BACP, UKCP, NCS, HCPC, BPS etc).
The clinical support provided by Vita Health Group is
primarily focused on ensuring clinical practice adheres to the requirements of
our various customers and should be seen as additional to your own clinical
supervision. An exception to this would be any risk disclosed by any client. We
require this to be shared with our clinical team to ensure safety and to
support co-ordinating treatment.
3. Working with us
Our Case Management System
Vita Health Group (VHG) have developed a bespoke case management system, specifically with our mental health network therapists in mind. Upon registering with us, you will be provided with a unique username and password to our system and will be able to use this to accept referrals and provide therapy to patients.
We developed this system to make your work with us simpler, easier, and more efficient – reducing the administrative burden of running your business while allowing you to focus on delivering high quality care to our clients. The system supports the following key activities:
· Accessible via your internet browser, anywhere anytime.
· Single system to open up your available appointment slots, manage your own diary and make appointment changes.
· Securely accept referrals with confidential patient data.
· Conduct remote appointments within the platform using the video feature.
· Log session attendance/non-attendance & complete case notes.
· Clients can complete clinical questionnaires ahead of sessions, automatically populating the system for you to view before and/or during the appointment. (may differ between customers for queries relating to this see key contact information)
· Resource Homework Library – allocate an array of validated clinical resources to your client to support their treatment.
· See your own reporting & statistics, including appointments and clinical recovery.
As part of your role as a Network Therapist you will be required to complete session notes, GP letters, discharge reports and risk assessments, directly within our case management system. This keeps all client information in one place, accessible to you as the treating therapist, and to VHG for customer monitoring and governance purposes. More guidance on this is included below.
Full user guides for all our system features can be accessed here.
Please note - if you are finding that you are not getting allocated enough referrals from VHG and would like more, it may be for one of the following reasons:
· Availability not scheduled at the right times of peak demand.
· Not offering face to face appointments.
· High sessional fees.
·
Less referrals in your geographical location.
Setting yourself up on the system
You will have received an email from the Making People
Better platform, please ensure you do check your junk/spam folders.
Our DNA and Cancellation Policy
Detailed instructions on how to record a DNA on the system this can be found here. You do not need to complete a copy of our sessional note template.
For most contracts, clients are allowed up to two DNAs, at which point they would be discharged. You can find our DNA and cancellation policy here.
Cases that have had two DNA’s and 7 days have passed with no contact from the client from the automated emails, please discharge from your caseload.
If a client
cancels their appointment in advance of their booked
session, please re-arrange the
appointment with the patient directly.
Our Invoicing Terms
Below deadlines for invoices:
Invoicing
Invoices submitted between 26th of the current month – 10th of the following month payment will be made on the last working day or the next working day if this falls on weekend or bank holiday.
Invoices submitted between 11th of the current
month - 25th of that current month payment will be made on the
15th of the following month or the next working day if this
falls on weekend or bank holiday
Invoicing in December
Please be aware as we will be working with Skeleton staff towards the end of the December, please see the deadline below
Invoices submitted between 11th December and the 18th December, payment will be made on the 15th January or the next working day if this falls on weekend or bank holiday.
Invoices submitted between 19th December – 10th January, payment will be made on the last working day or the next working day if this falls on weekend or bank holiday
4. Working with our Patients/ Our Clinical Model
Risk & Safeguarding
As a Network Therapist, you will be expected to assess and manage risk and/or safeguarding issues with your clients both in-session and for any contact they may make with you outside of sessions, as appropriate within a psychological therapies’ context. A complete risk assessment is required at the first appointment, and this should be reviewed throughout therapy. To find out more information regarding risk assessments, please click here.
Requesting a Clinical Review
If you are concerned about a non-urgent risk to a client or safeguarding issue and would like to have the case reviewed, please request a case review within the Case Management System, find out how to do this by clicking here. Our Clinical Advisory Team will review this, and you may be contacted by one of our clinical team directly either via email or telephone if further information is required.
Please ensure the immediate safety of the client or any other at-risk individual, contacting the emergency services if required. If you require further support in the management of risk or safeguarding disclosures during your work with clients, you can contact our risk duty by emailing PTSriskduty@vhg.co.uk inside office hours of 9am-5pm.
The full VHG PTS Risk assessment and management guidance can be found here.
How to Conduct Sessions with Clients
Our system has a feature to allow therapists to conduct video calls directly within it. (Bupa clients are the only ones who have access to the patient portal, please ensure if you are conducting sessions for non-Bupa clients, a link for a platform of your choice is sent outside the system).
You may find this a helpful feature as a convenient and secure way to conduct appointments, as you will see from the user guides, you are also able to make notes as you conduct the appointment which will make your therapy sessions as seamless and efficient as possible on our system.
However, should you wish not to use our platform for
conducting appointments, you have the flexibility to use your own choice of video
Platform. However, we advise therapists not to use the free version of Zoom as
this platform ends sessions at 40 minutes and would disrupt your therapy
session.
Completing Case Notes
It is required that all session notes are submitted within 24 hours of the session taking place. We request your session notes are completed with 24 hours as we have a duty of care to ensure clients are receiving the treatment/care they require, and the clinical notes help us with this assurance.
Please note, if you do not complete your case notes within
48 hours of the appointment date and time, you will be unable to complete these
and will need to contact us by submitting a
ticket here.
Session Limits & Requesting additional sessions
When you are sent a referral there will be a session limit assigned to the referral within the system. This is pre-populated by VHG. If you feel for clinical reasons that additional sessions are needed you will need to notify us at the earliest opportunity, so that we can ensure we review this in plenty of time. We recommend you do this with at least 3 sessions to spare. Detailed guidance on how to request additional sessions within the patient management system can be found here for counselling and here for CBT. Please be advised that additional session approval cannot be guaranteed and will be looked at on a case-by-case basis, based on clinical rationale and contractual agreements.
Please ensure additional sessions request are not requested on the final sessions, as this will cause delay in treatment.
VHG sometimes need to attain authorisation from the employer or insurer – in these instances we will need to ensure the patient has consented to us contacting their employer or insurer for these reasons.
Outcome Measures
Where Disorder Specific Measures are used these must also be
completed at the beginning, middle and end of therapy. Any customer specific
questionnaires will be notified to you at point of referral.
Work Status & Occupational Functioning
Please review work status every session and explore any issues impacting on general functional at work and explore steps to thrive at work. If client is off work, explore barriers and any assistance needed to aid return to work.
Please ensure that you review the client’s work status at each session and comment on this in your notes. The accuracy of this information is vital as our contracts require us to report on it.
Please select from the options provided:
a) At work – if working on full duties
b) Restricted duties – job role altered as a result of presenting problem
c) Off work
d)
Plans to
return to work – to be used
if the client has been off work
and plans to return to work on an
upcoming agreed date with employer.
Complaints and Incidents
Where an incident or serious incident has taken place (e.g.
death of a service user, high risk incident, near miss, data breach), the VHG Incident Policy(QA9100B) will be followed, and the VHG Network Clinical Advisory Team will
investigate the incident and liaise with the Network Therapist accordingly.
Audits and Performance Management
The clinical performance of our network therapists is managed in the same way as internal staff using a live Clinical Dashboard within the patient management system. This provides analysis at a therapist level as well as a customer and overall service level.
In addition, monitoring of the volume and nature of complaints, as well as behaviours and responsiveness identified through contact with the VHG Network Clinical Advisory Team and liaison with other staff members is taken into considerations when reviewing therapy quality, to ensure the highest standards of care are provided to our clients.
Our Clinical team has implemented assurance and audit processes.
These processes enable us to take a more proactive approach to working with our network providers. We are aware that our network providers have diverse skill sets and experience. Some may have worked with other provider networks for a long time, while others may be new to this way of working and to our client groups. Our processes have been developed so that we can identify areas of need and offer support, education and guidance in a timely manner and ensure that psychological therapies meet the quality standards our customers and clients require.
We will also be
able to do more to proactively recognise and celebrate good practice and
clinical excellence across our network.
5. Our Refer a Friend Bonus Scheme
For any new Clinicians referred to our Network you will receive £150*. Simply make an introduction and we will do the rest!*
· · £150 payable on completion of 50 clinical contacts by the referred candidate
· · Invoice us separately when you qualify.
Click to refer a therapist now
|
Click to refer a therapist now |
· Did Not Attends are not counted towards the 50 clinical contacts.
· Payments to employees are subject to tax and National Insurance.
· The scheme applies to the introduction of Mental Health Network Clinicians only
· New Mental Health Network Clinicians only, internal referrals do not qualify (i.e. current VHG employees moving to the Network).
· Receiving individual needs to be actively Onboarded and accepting referrals at the time bonus is due to be paid.
· Actively Onboarded means not subject to any sanctions, Do Not Use lists or cancelled.
· Payment can be made to a single individual only.
· We reserve the right to alter or terminate this scheme at any time
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