23
may
0

Episode 15 – Karen Acott – a pharmacist partner explains

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Wow! What an inspiring podcast we have this week as Ben talks to pharmacist Karen Acott. Karen was the country’s first ever pharmacist partner in a GP practice in 2004 and is now Chairman of a major GP federation in Devon. She tells Ben about the value to a practice of employing a pharmacist and provides inspiration to all professionals working in primary care.

Show Notes

Karen explains how she started out on her career (43secs)

The first pharmacist to be appointed as a partner (2mins 30secs)

Karen describes how she created the new role of pharmacist partner (2mins 49secs)

Advice for practices thinking of appointing a pharmacist (3mins 57secs)

Selling the business case for investing in a pharmacist (5mins 14secs)

The advantages of independent prescribers (6secs 20secs)

Training independent prescribers (6mins 58secs)

Independent prescribers are out there (7mins 33secs)

Karen was Pharmacy Professional of the Year in 2012 (8mins 08secs)

Cuts to community pharmacy and the Pharmacy Integration Fund (8mins 30secs)

The uneasy relationship between community pharmacies and GP practices (11mins 07secs)

Karen is chair of an 82 practice GP federation in Devon (12mins 47secs)

What is the federation delivering? (14mins 24secs)

Operating at scale in the future (15mins 18secs)

Advice for other pharmacists (16mins 20secs)

17
may
0

Episode 14: Su Long – The Bolton Quality Contract

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With the Bolton Quality Contract, Bolton CCG has invested an additional £3m in General Practice and provided a guaranteed income per patient. In turn this has helped them to tackle some of their most pressing problems including access and the patient experience through incentives for the delivery of a set of agreed standards. The contract has been a huge success and effectively funded itself in the first year. Ben talks to Su Long, the Accountable Officer at Bolton CCG, to understand more about how the contract was developed, how it works and how its success is being measured.

Show Notes

Su explains how the new contract in Bolton came about (58secs)

The local GPs are engaged in developing the contract and setting the new standards (2mins 02secs)

The standards aim to improve access (2mins 57secs)

The Bolton Quality Contract: changing the way practices are funded to incentivise achievement of the standards (3mins 54secs)

How does it work with QOF and enhanced services? (4mins 47secs)

What about the practices that were already funded at a higher level? (5secs 27secs)

For how long does the contract run? (6mins 39secs)

How is the new contract funded? (7mins 02secs)

The new contract aims to pay for itself in the first year (7mins 25secs)

The Board recognised that investing in General Practice was essential (7mins 55secs)

The process took just nine months to establish (8mins 38secs)

How is the additional funding paid to practices (9mins 50secs)

What should measure and how? (10mins 32secs)

Payments come in each quarter (12mins 15secs)

Data is an issue (12mins 46secs)

40 standards is perhaps too many! (13mins 29secs)

What were the results in the first year? (13mins 42secs)

….60,000 additional appointment slots in primary care…and more (14mins 05secs)

…improvements in the Friends and Family test, prescribing and take-up of screening… (14mins 48secs)

…successfully improving capacity (16mins 04secs)

How the practices have responded (16mins 57secs)

The standard setting is very robust (17mins 40 secs)

The investment has paid for itself (18mins 50secs)

Reviewing and developing the contract (19mins 06secs)

Advice for other CCGs (20mins 04secs)

Your CCG colleagues might think you are mad to take the risk! (20mins 45secs)

Investment in capacity in General Practice is essential for the whole health system (21mins 27secs)

A paper describing the Bolton Quality Contract in some detail can be found here

 

9
may
0

Episode 13: Mark Newbold – Our Health Partnership – the story so far

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Our Health Partnership in Birmingham is the biggest GP partnership in the UK covering 32 practices, 150 partners and a population of 280,000. Ben talks to Managing Director Dr Mark Newbold in the second of our podcast series tracking the progress of OHP, and discovers how the partnership works, what the benefits are and what lessons have been learnt so far.

Show Notes

Progress in making Our Health Partnership the biggest GP partnership in the UK (34secs)

A single legal partnership – not a federation (1mins 35secs)

How does the model maintain the local feel (2mins 22secs)

The founding principles of Our Health Partnership (3mins 26secs)

Practices as profit centres (4mins 10secs)

Clusters of practices sharing functions (4mins 42secs)

What do the practices get from the “centre” (5mins 22secs)

The objectives of Our Health Partnership see below

Practices pay a levy but get much of it back in benefit (7mins 01secs)

Six months on – is it still a “grassroots movement”? (9mins 12secs)

A stronger voice for the practices – a challenge in Birmingham (10mins 34secs)

Large practices are the future – developing new models of care (11mins 48secs)

Practices need to be big enough to make it work (13mins 10secs)

What makes the model work? (14mins 26secs)

Developing from a shared vision (15mins 41secs)

The lessons learned – getting the fundamentals in place and being clear about the ethos (16mins 10secs)

The role of the CCG (16mins 52secs)

Who holds the contracts? (17mins 57secs)

How can interested practices contact Mark? (19mins 15secs)

The Our Health Partnership website can be found here

If you are interested in working with/meeting with Our Health Partnership, please complete the proforma available on their website here and send to MD@ourhealthpartnership.com

Mark can be contacted directly at marknewbold51@gmail.com

Our Health Partnership Objectives 2016/17

We will make life better for patients and partners by:

  1. Introducing a quality support offer, with provision of benchmarking data, to member practices to support quality improvement, and aid preparation for CQC inspections
  2. Collaborating on Local Enhanced Services including ACE delivery to develop standard OHP templates and to implement the ambulance triage system across our practices. We will develop a bid to access ACE funding in 2017/18 and continue this work further
  3. Exploring options for new ways of working, and staff development, in conjunction with HEWM, and share best practice within the ACE programme through training
  4. Developing a range of initiatives to support temporary staffing needs in practices:
  • A GP locum database and internal GP locum solution
  • An internal staffing bank to offer nursing, other clinical and administrative support
  • A salaried doctors pool to provide consistent high quality support to practices
  1. Developing a strategy for improving access to primary care, to include both increased use of technology and provision of a 7 day service

We will create efficiencies for our Partner Practices by:

  1. Introducing centralised payroll for all staff
  2. Implementing a centralised finance and banking facility utilising a single software system
  3. Providing a centralised legal facility
  4. Providing a centralised HR facility
  5. Introducing centralised procurement to offer the following to practices:
  • A procurement solution for consumables
  • Medical indemnity cover, practice insurance, and utility contracts at lower cost
  • Exploring options for greater efficiency in back office functions

We will ensure the sustainability of our organisation by:

  1. Developing a strong OHP brand, underpinned by a Communications Strategy
  2. Ensuring we grow by 20% in order to maintain efficiency and influence
  3. Remaining involved in the strategic development of GP at scale at local and national levels
  4. Continually improving our Board capability via a development programme

As an ambitious organisation, committed to primary care development, we will align our developmental objectives with those of NHS England, and take opportunities that arise, to ensure steady and sustainable growth in line with our vision

We will develop our organisation by:

  1. Working closely with primary care partners including BIG Practice to establish a strong and influential voice for general practice in the local health system
  2. Exploring the option of bidding, with a partner, for the Urgent Care Centre procurement
  3. Exploring business opportunities such as referral triage, subject to assessment of risk and benefit to OHP
  4. Contributing to research in relevant areas and rigorously evaluating our own progress
  5. Evaluating options for funded development including digital primary care advances, social prescribing and commercial partnerships
  6. Putting a detailed plan in place for developing into a Multispecialty Community Provider / Accountable Care Organisation
5
may
0

Bonus Episode: King’s Fund Report on General Practice

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The King’s Fund have today (5th May) published their report “Understanding Pressures in General Practice”. In a bonus episode of his popular podcast, Ben Gowland speaks to Beccy Baird, a Fellow in Health Policy and one of the authors of the report. What does the report tell us about the current state of General Practice – and will anyone listen?

Show Notes

The report is aimed at policy makers and aims to illuminate the current picture of General Practice (36secs)

The report is seeking to generate positive change (1mins 11secs)

Do the movers and shakers believe that the crisis exists? (1mins 36secs)

The report shows that activity has gone up more than was previously believed (2mins 02secs)

How do we explain the rise in activity? (2mins 47secs)

Should the amount of money GPs receive go up accordingly? (3mins 19secs)

Isn’t it all about funding? (3mins 39secs)

Is the new money announced in the GP Forward View sufficient? (4mins 18secs)

There has been a growth in the GP workforce – but not enough (4mins 59secs)

Solving the current recruitment crisis (5mins 45secs)

The impact of part-time working (6mins 37secs)

Part-time working to cope with the pressure (7mins 23secs)

What should we do about the crisis? (8mins 14secs)

Is working at greater scale the way forward? (9mins 06secs)

Is integration the way forward? (10mins 13secs)

Isn’t the lack of time for GPs the big barrier to change? (11mins 14secs)

Should CCGs be seconding their GP leaders into the development of General Practice? (12mins 14secs)

Does the GP Forward View solve the problems? (13mins 04secs)

What should an “average” Practice be doing now? (14mins 01secs)

What should Jeremy Hunt do now? (14mins 54secs)

3
may
0

Episode 12: The GP Forward View

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The recently published GP Forward View appears to present practices with a number of opportunities. What does a practice need to do to access a share of the £2.4bn available? Ben Gowland discusses the various “pots” of money that are being released and urges practices to prepare well in advance.

Show Notes

The GP Forward View – opportunity or threat? (54 secs)

What does the extra money mean for practices? (1min 35secs)

Recurrent money that practices can access (2mins 39secs)

7 day working not compulsory (3mins 08secs)

Is capital money available? (4mins 06secs)

Relaxing the rules on accessing capital (4mins 36secs)

Availability of non-recurrent money (5mins 25secs)

Practices need to pursue the right “pot” of money (5mins 55secs)

Investing in GPs suffering from burn-out (6mins 25secs)

Money for workforce and recruitment (6mins 39secs)

Introducing 5000 non-GPs to the workforce (7mins 09secs)

Extending the scheme to support recruitment of pharmacists (7mins 30secs)

£45m to introduce on-line consultations (8mins 08secs)

£30m to support access (8mins 40secs)

Are costs likely to go down as a result of the Forward View? (8mins 52secs)

Reducing the costs of bureaucracy (9mins 28secs)

Changing the frequency of CQC inspections (10mins 08secs)

The decisions practices need to be making now (10mins 37secs)

Getting more information (12mins 04secs)

Ockham Healthcare has a blog on the finances relating to the Forward View and his can be accessed here.

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