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Amongst the host of new roles available to PCNs are First Contact Physiotherapists (FCPs); a service designed to signpost patients directly into a physiotherapy service and therefore saving valuable GP and GP referral to treatment times. As this is a relatively new concept for most, we speak this week to Larry Koyama, Head of FCP Implementation at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy to get the lowdown on what an FCP actually is, what the role can offer in terms of supporting practice efficiency, the suggested models for successfully embedding FCPs in both an employment sense and in terms of integration within the wider network, the lessons learned so far and more.

Introduction (0:35)

The background to Larry’s role (0:46)

Making the case for First Contact Physiotherapists (1:34)

What is an FCP? (2:34)

What is the difference between a Physiotherapist and an FCP? (3:38)

Patient pathway and service access (4:28)

Crunching the numbers; caseload and appointment sizes (5:11)

FCPs per population size (5:52)

Lessons learned so far (6:51)

FCPs within the wider practice and network teams (8:19)

Optimising working experience within a network environment (10:03)

3 suggested employment models (12:37)

Exploring the implications of direct and indirect employment (14:21)

Current availability of FCPs (15:45)

Larry’s final thoughts on making the most of your FCP (16:46)

Finding out more (18:27)

There is a range of CSP FCP resources which can be found here

The link to the Phase 3 FCP evaluation data Larry refers to is here