“There are plenty of teams in every sport that have great players and never win titles. Most of the time, those players aren’t willing to sacrifice for the greater good of the team. The funny thing is, in the end, their unwillingness to sacrifice only makes individual goals more difficult to achieve. One thing I believe to the fullest is that if you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades will take care of themselves.”  Michael Jordan

There is an interesting dilemma facing many practices right now, as they work out how to make the most out of PCNs.  Is it better to maximise the gains for your own individual PCN, or is it better to work together with other PCNs to maximise the gains for general practice as whole?

This manifests itself when a collection of PCNs in an area have to make a decision, and different PCNs have different views.  The decision could be for example whether one individual can represent all of the PCNs in a system-wide meeting.  If that individual can speak as a united voice on behalf of all practices then the overall voice of local practices is stronger.

But that individual may not fully represent the views of “our” PCN.  What if we don’t fully agree with what they say, or don’t trust them to put our point across?  We end up feeling the need to represent ourselves and our own PCN.  But now there are two voices of local general practice.  And if we contradict each other, the overall voice and impact of general practice is diminished.  But at least we know that our individual view and has been represented, and our views fed accurately into the system-wide discussion.

Or maybe we need to decide whether our PCN should use the federation to deliver extended access services, or whether we deliver these directly as a PCN.  If all the PCNs agree to the same model, the overall costs and administration to general practice are likely to be cheaper.

However, an individual PCN may be able to develop its own model which delivers greater retained profits for its member practices.  It may have access to capacity or management capability which mean the cost of delivering directly for that PCN are less than going with the federation model.  In doing so, the costs of using the federation model are likely to go up for the other PCNs and practices (because the fixed costs are then shared between fewer practices).  But at least our PCN has maximised the potential of the opportunity presented.

Should, then, individual PCNs make decisions based on the direct interest of itself and its member practices, or on the greater good of the wider group of local general practices?

The fates of PCNs and practices in an area are actually intertwined, whether PCNs and practices like it or not.  How much a system invests in local general practice overall will be determined by the extent to which general practice is able to both agree amongst itself and collectively deliver.  A system is not going to choose to invest in the medium to long term into one PCN over and above the others in an area, because it will want gains to be delivered to all of its population not just parts of it.

Choosing to take decisions based on maximising the gains of short term opportunities for an induvial PCN is short sighted, particularly when this comes at the expense of neighbouring practices and PCNs.  Operating in isolation will ultimately come at a cost to overall general practice.

What Michael Jordan said applies directly to practices and PCNs within a local area, “If you think and achieve as a team, the individual accolades (gains) will take care of themselves”.