Weight Management LCS

NHS England’s national weight management enhanced service is continuing in 2024/54, to encourage primary care to engage with patients living with obesity.

In 2018/19, the majority of adults in England (63%) were living with excess weight with 26% of men and 29% of women living with obesity or severe obesity.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of weight management. Living with excess weight puts people at greater risk of serious illness or death from COVID-19, with risk growing substantially as body mass index (BMI) increases.

Please see the NHS England website for the specification and further information.

Description

Despite obesity being a recognised risk factor for the development of several long-term conditions, and despite prevalence of obesity remaining high, there is evidence that the numbers of people identified by general practice as living with obesity fell during the pandemic.

The weight management enhanced service aims to:

support practices to develop and implement a proactive approach to the identification of patients living with obesity. For the purpose of this enhanced service, obesity is defined as a BMI ≥ 30 or ≥ 27.5 for those of black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups
support practices to engage with individual patients living with obesity and to refer patients who are ready to make behavioural changes to appropriate weight management programmes.

Please refer to the specification for the full requirements of the service and details of payment.

Summary of components

Component 1: Developing a Supportive Environment

1. Education & Training: GP practices must assure themselves that practice and PCN staff involved in referral and signposting conversations have the necessary skills and training on conversational approaches to lifestyle and weight management.

2. Development of a practice-based approach to the identification and support of people living with obesity.

3. Review and maintenance of the GP Practice Obesity Register.

Component 2: Patient support and referral

1. For individual patients recorded on the QOF Obesity Register as of 31 March 2020, and those identified as living with obesity during the service period, the GP practice should make an individual assessment of patient readiness to engage with weight management services and record the outcome of this in the patient record. All referrals to Weight Management Services must be made by suitably trained and competent GP practice or Primary care Network (PCN) healthcare professionals.

2. Prior to referral to the most clinically appropriate weight management service, healthcare professionals must obtain informed patient consent to engage with weight management services and the patient’s consent to make the referral.

The guidance and audit requirements for the Weight Management ES remain unchanged and are set out in the spec. Referrals will be allocated for each practice at a national level depending on the number of practices that accept the service offered on CQRS. Payment under the service remains at £11.50 per referral.

Weight management services

The following weight management services are available across NCL.

Full service details can be found on individual GP website pages.
For borough-level summary weight-management infographics, see downloads (right).

Weight Management LCS