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Episode Six:

Fascinating insights from a lead GP about what it meant for his practice as it got bigger through a series of mergers driven by a core set of values and a desire to improve population health. This week Ben talks to Dr Andy Whittamore, lead GP at the Portdown Group Practice in Portsmouth. In part two, next week, Ben hears from Mark Stubbings, the Business Partner at the same practice.

Show Notes

Andy begins to describe the journey towards the six-site, 40,000 practice they are today (55 secs)

Sharing resources leads to financial security (2mins 17secs)

Aiming to reduce the number of sites (2mins 57secs)

A fifteen-partner democracy? (3mins 37secs)

The size of the practice impacts on recruitment (4mins 30secs)

Scale allows partners to develop specialist interests (4mins 55secs)

Specialist GPs give additional support to the nurses and reduce referral and admission rates (5mins 30secs)

Do you have one team or six teams? (6mins 33secs)

Protecting the “Portsdown ethos” (7mins 07secs)

Reducing reliance on locums with a pool of salaried doctors (7mins 32secs)

Improving population health through scale (8mins 06secs)

Leading the local integration agenda (9mins 08secs)

Investing in technology and working with partners (9mins 26secs)

A common understanding to achieve merger (10mins 02secs)

The real and perceived barrier of culture (11mins 18secs)

The next stage – doubling size again (11mis 52secs)

How does being bigger benefit the practice? (12mins 59secs)

Using scale to develop effective partnerships (13mins 45secs)

Developing services with other practices (14mins 27secs)

Advice to practices considering a merger (15mins 08secs)

Resources to make a merger work? (15mins 52secs)