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Ben welcomes Robert McCartney back to the podcast. Although Robert has been a guest on the podcast before he has now joined Hempsons as an associate where he focuses on aiding GP mergers and assisting PCNs, helping them form entities. This episode revolves around the relationship between GP Practices and PCNs, highlighting its significance for their future. They discuss the existing challenges that GP Practices and PCNs are facing regarding mergers, whilst also exploring potential strategies to overcome these hurdles and address ongoing disputes. Robert shares insights into his criteria for assessing governance within PCNs, covering aspects such as financial matters, decision-making processes, performance evaluation, staffing, and lastly, clinical governance. Robert wraps up the episode by sharing reflections, suggestions for proactive steps, and advice to facilitate progress moving forward.

Introduction (0:09)

Relationship between Practices & PCNs.. (0:51)

Current issues.. (2:26)

Financial disputes.. (3:56)

Moving forward with disputes.. (4:58)

External support.. (6:08)

PCN funding.. (7:47)

Importance of trust.. (9:50)

Governance within PCN’s.. (10:42)

Minimum level of infrastructure that Robert would expect to see.. (12:42)

Have PCN’s got the minimum level of infrastructure in place? (13:59)

PCN’s going down the incorporation route.. (15:52)

Access the ‘No risk’ of PCNs being scrapped, says NHS England GP lead’ article here (17:21)

Risks of creating distances between organisations .. (18:48)

Practices merging to become PCN size.. (21:25)

Should practices merge in stages or all at once? (22:27)

Robert’s final thoughts.. (24:23)

Robert’s contact details.. (26:19)

Contact Robert via email here.

For all enquiries about the Ockham podcast, please contact Ben Gowland here.