A paradox is, “a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true.”

Try this one on for size… In order to retain autonomy GP practices need to give up autonomy. Is that absurd or true?

It is, in fact, The Autonomy Paradox!

The first question we need to consider is “why is operating at-scale of benefit to practices?” It is because, the argument goes, costs can be reduced, income can be increased, and new ways of working and new roles can be introduced to reduce workload.

But none of these things can happen without practices operating together as a collective. The group of practices working together “at scale” need to agree to a single way of doing things in order for any of the benefits to be realised.

For example, they all need to agree to move to a single accountant, or they all need to agree to a new paramedic-led visiting service, or they all need to agree to cross-refer their dermatology patients to one of the practices rather than sending them directly to the local hospital. Some practices will gain more than others from each change. One practice may have very cheap accountants, and my gain little or even lose out by the shift to one accountant across the group, but by that practice agreeing to it the group as a whole gains. Equally another practice may have a very low level of visits and so introducing the new paramedic model may feel like it is more trouble than its worth, but by participating the group as a whole benefits. The benefits of individual changes are rarely shared equally.

This, of course, is where difficulties set in. In my work with practices up and down the country, I am yet to go to an area that has introduced extended access without disputes about differential utilisation between practices. There is a deep seated reluctance for any practice to agree to a change that benefits another practice more, let alone one that might create a worse position for itself “for the greater good”.

But for operating at-scale to work, this is exactly what is required. For working together to deliver the maximum overall benefit, practices have to be prepared to make individual decisions for the benefit of the group, and trust that the overall benefit of working together will come to them.

Of course this is not the only option. Practices could fully merge, and then the single entity gains the benefit, rather than them being (differentially) apportioned across participants. But what is the cost of this for the original practice? In this (merged) scenario the practice has given up its independence altogether to become a new (admittedly independent) organisation. But it is no longer in its original state, with the freedoms that brought. The cost of receiving an equal share of the benefits was for the original practices to give up their independence altogether to form a new practice.

As the scale of the required changes grows, so does the problem. At what point, or at what size of practice, do we declare we no longer have independent general practice, but rather a group of (GP-led) corporations running the majority of services? Is this future worth it in order to ensure that at each point benefits are shared equally between practices?

In order to retain autonomy GP practices need to give up autonomy. If practices choose to cede some decision-making to the collective, so that benefits can be achieved at the group level rather than solely at an individual level, practices could retain their independence. They could avoid the need to either merge into larger and larger practices, or reach a dead-end when getting out is the only option remaining.

The choice is not either independence or dependence. Inter-dependence, and using federations, networks and the like to create this, is an option that allows practices to stay as separate units but enjoy the benefits of scale. But it requires practices to give up some autonomy in order to retain overall autonomy.