Health column: Have you had a health check?

Over my last few columns, I have been focusing on some of the many amazing things that GP practices across the Borough are doing to support patients and help them stay well. This month I am in Atherton, particularly visiting Meadowview Surgery and looking at the work they have been doing to encourage more people to take up the offer of an NHS health check.

The NHS health check is a free check-up of your overall health. It is vital because it can tell you whether you are at higher risk of getting certain problems with your health as you age, such as heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, or having a stroke. If you’re aged over 65, you will also be checked for your risk of developing dementia.

If you’re aged 40 to 74 and don’t already have a health condition that means you are regularly being checked, you should be invited for a health check every 5 years.

Many conditions like high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes and other illnesses are picked up at your health check meaning they can be treated and managed early. Which is why the work happening at Meadowview is so important.

Meadowview Surgery wanted to understand why people didn’t take up their offer of a health check, and what they could do to change it.

They took a sample of 200 people who had been invited over a period of 3 months and looked at how they had been invited. They spotted an immediate challenge. 90% of people had been invited by text message alone. Of these people, only 22% had come for their health check, meaning the majority did not.

However, of the people who had been invited verbally – over the phone or by a doctor or nurse in a consultation, every single one had their health check. In total, only 36% of people had a health check after they had been invited, meaning lots of people missed the opportunity to get checked. This was even lower for people who had a mental health condition.

When they spoke to people who didn’t attend to understand why, lots of reasons were given: they didn’t know what they were being invited to; they were too busy being a carer; they needed an interpreter and so didn’t understand the text; they thought they were healthy and didn’t need it.

As a result of this, Meadowview Surgery have now changed how they invite people to their health checks, giving much more information about what health checks are and why they are important, and considering individual needs around languages. They are also doing many more health checks when people are in the practice for other reasons.

These small changes will mean that more people take up their health check and have the opportunity to live longer, healthier and happier lives. And the learning has been shared with all practices across Atherton and the whole borough.

Amazing and potentially life-saving work like this is happening all over the Borough, so join me next month when we will look more closely at the work happening south of Wigan and in Ashton. In the meantime, if you get invited to a health check – however that invite arrives, please make it a priority and get yourself booked in.