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This is the second conversation between Ben and Paul Deffley, Hove GP and clinical director of Practice Unbound; a not-for-profit organisation devoted to “helping general practice work smarter”. In this episode Paul uses the example of a pathology delegation pilot to look at how practices can effectively work together across networks, how they can better manage change and, working at scale, deliver network solutions to collective problems.

Show Notes

Paul outlines his background and his positive view of PCNs (0:48)

An example of working together – a pilot for pathology delegation (2:55)

Tests not needing a clinical context (5:00)

Understanding the pathology activity – what’s safe to delegate (6:07)

Clinical variation in pathology requests – and reducing requesting patterns (7:20)

Managing the delegated requests – a non-clinical team approach (8:37)

Group consultations? Testing different ways of managing patients (9:16)

Overcoming the concerns about risk (9:47)

Understanding the fears (10:59)

Grouping routine tests (11:17)

Auditing the administrators (12:54)

The impact on GP workload – 90% of routine bloods are handled by the admin team (13:27)

Working smarter (14:05)

Clinical variation down (15:02)

Is this a legitimate use of PCN time and energy? (15:33)

PCNs looking at individual GP practice (16:49)

Establishing and maintaining trust (18:37)

The impact of networks on shared problems (19:47)

Making the most of development funding (20:47)

An end-to-end flow exercise (22:49)

Positive relationships (23:33)

Further information (24:20)

Practice Unbound’s web address is www.practiceunbound.org.uk

And Paul can be emailed directly at Pauldeffley@nhs.net