Part Two of our second panel discussion on the future infrastructure of general practice. Ben is joined by a panel of renowned national experts (see below) and in this part the panel discusses the importance of data and information systems, the value of greater integration, a focus on prevention and wellness and the need to prove the value of generalists.

Ben is joined by:

Vincent Buscemi: a health and social care lawyer and partner at Bevan Brittan

Jon Griffiths: GP and chair of NHS Vale Royal CCG

Jonathan Serjeant: GP and Director of Creative Partnerships at Here

Jeannie Watkins: President and Chair of the Professional Standards Sub-Committee at the Faculty of Physician Associates at the Royal College of Physicians

This is the second in our series of panel discussions in which Ben is joined by a panel of renowned national experts. This time we discuss what the infrastructure of general practice will look like in five years’ time. In this first part the panel considers how the scale of general practice might change and, amongst other things, disruptive technologies, the future of the partnership model and the move to population health management.

Part Two will follow next week.

This time Ben is joined by:

Vincent Buscemi: a health and social care lawyer and partner at Bevan Brittan

Jon Griffiths: GP and chair of NHS Vale Royal CCG

Jonathan Serjeant: GP and Director of Creative Partnerships at Here

Jeannie Watkins: President and Chair of the Professional Standards Sub-Committee at the Faculty of Physician Associates at the Royal College of Physicians

Aisha Malik is a sessional GP in Manchester and a social media strategist for doctors and healthcare organisations. She is the founder of Doctors in Business, an organisation which aims to get doctors more visible online. In this episode she explains how a traumatic early experience in general practice (which saw her practice rated as one of the worst in the country by the CQC) eventually led to an interest in the ways that social media can influence patient behaviour and contribute to practice success.

Dr Hussein Gandhi (aka Dr Gandalf) and Dr Andy Foster are two GPs who run the eGPLearning Podblast. The Podblast explores new resources for primary care health tech, current news and covers regular interviews with health tech innovators. In this episode Ben asks Andy and Gandhi what impact they think technology is having on general practice; both now and in the future.

Ishani Patel is a GP partner in North West London and co-founder of Lantum a company formed “to help healthcare professionals unlock the complexity of staffing in today’s healthcare system” and part of the NHS Innovation Accelerator. Lantum have created a technological platform to support workforce mobilisation which is delivering a number of benefits including reducing agency spend, saving managers around four hours a week, improving fill-rate and even extending GP careers. In this episode Ishani explains, amongst other things, how the platform works, how it supports at-scale working and how it is likely to develop in the future.

Vincent Buscemi is a health and social care lawyer and a partner at Bevan Brittan, a leading commercial law firm. Vincent has wide experience of advising independent and public sector organisations on a wide range of issues including powers, decision-making and governance arrangements. In this episode Vincent takes Ben through the fine detail of setting up limited companies, forming “back-office” hubs and avoiding the potential pitfalls of both.

Regular listeners will know Dr Mark Newbold well. He is the Managing Director of Our Health Partnership (OHP), the Birmingham and Shropshire based super-practice covering 38 practices and a population of over 340,000. We have been following the progress of OHP since we began the podcast and you can find the previous episodes here: Episode 79, Episode 41 and Episode 13. In this new episode, two years on from the formation of OHP, Mark describes how the partnership is developing, how practices are being engaged, the development of their seven localities, their major integration project and their approach to risk…and much more.

Rachel Morris is a GP who works for Red Whale (“one of the leading providers of primary care medical education in the UK”) In this podcast Rachel describes two courses that Red Whale run aimed at developing leadership skills in primary care leaders. The first is Lead. Manage. Thrive! - a very popular one day course in management skills for GPs. The second is a new course on Working At Scale. Rachel explains how and why the programmes were developed, who the training is aimed at and what the courses cover.

Phil Coates is a practice management consultant and an expert on the new General Data Protection Regulation which comes into force on 25th May 2018. In this podcast Phil explains how the GDPR will impact on general practices and what practices should be doing now to prepare. He covers the new roles required by the regulation and offers a number of places where practices can find additional support.

Judith Harvey writes regularly for the National Association of Sessional GPs newsletter and other GP publications. Her articles have now been gathered into a recently published book; Perspectives. Judith’s interests range from the Cuban health system (she founded the charity Cuba Medical Link to enable students to travel to Cuba for their electives) to self-prescribing by GPs and from her own experiences with concussion to the social pressure put on potential organ donors. Ben talks to Judith about her life, her career and her writing.

Amer Sheikh is the musculo-skeletal clinical lead for North West Surrey CCG and Surrey Heartlands STP. He also runs a musculo-skeletal and chronic pain course for Red Whale (of GP-Update fame). In this podcast he describes how, in North West Surrey, they were able to introduce a new model of musculo-skeletal care by putting more resources into the start of the patient journey and so reduce delays and the need for surgery.

We follow up Episode 102 with the second part of our panel discussion on technology. Five nationally renowned practitioners with an interest in new technology look at how technology is shaping the future of general practice. In this final part of the discussion they focus their discussions on virtual and augmented reality, some of the ethical issues and how practices should be preparing now for the digital future.

William Bird is a GP from Reading and is the CEO and founder of Intelligent Health (“…dedicated to increasing physical activity and improving the health of communities around the world”). In this podcast he explains to Ben how his career has been focussed on encouraging physical activity as a means of improving health and happiness. He talks Ben through a number of schemes including Health Walks, the Green Gym and Beat the Street. He finishes by eloquently summarising how he believes we could, as a race of hunter-gatherers, shift the focus from illness to wellbeing.

In this, the first in a series of expert panel discussions, five nationally renowned practitioners with an interest in new technology look at how technology is shaping the future of general practice. In Part One of the discussion the panel considers virtual consultations and the impact of digital technologies. Part Two will follow in a few weeks.

Although she has been a GP for less than four years, Surina Chibber has developed an enviable portfolio career including the formation of a successful business: My Locum GP. In this episode she describes how she developed her business and what it does. She also gives her perspectives on what new GPs are looking for, on how the general practice model might need to change to meet these needs and what she would like to see from general practice in five years’ time.

Wow! Our 100th episode. We are privileged to welcome Dr Robert Varnam, Head of General Practice Development at NHS England. Robert is the foremost advocate of the ten high impact interventions outlined in the GP Five Year Forward View. In this podcast Robert explains how the ten high impact changes developed, how they have impacted on general practice and what the future for general practice might look like.

GP Dr Amit Bhargava has been involved in commissioning in Crawley, West Sussex for many years. Recent statistics (from NHS England in October 2017) show that Crawley has the lowest rate of emergency admissions in the country. In this episode Amit tells Ben about how Crawley has approached tackling health inequalities, the role for general practice and the partnerships they have developed with the local authority, the community and third sector providers. He goes on to describe the “social prescription offer” made to patients and how the community is beginning to focus on wellness.

Reform is an independent think-tank aiming to improve the way public services are delivered. They have recently published a report called “A design diagnosis: reinvigorating the primary care estate” and, in this episode, Ben talks to two of the authors of that report, Maisie Borrows and Daniel El-Gamry about their findings, the role of STPs in development of the estate, concerns about funding and some of the key lessons they have learnt.

Louise Greenwood is responsible for training and education at Wessex LMCS; an umbrella body covering LMCs across a large swathe of central-south England. In this podcast Louise tells Ben about the activities that have been put in place to support practice managers in the area including a new appraisal system that strengthens PM appraisal and provides productive and motivating time for the appraisees (and their appraisers) whilst also identifying learning needs and allowing planning for the future.

Sandeep Kapur was a fullt-ime NHS GP but gave up his full-time role to join a private GP service called Qured, operating in Central and South West London. Sandeep became Qured’s Chief Medical Officer and in this episode he explains what made him move from an NHS partnership role. He explains the role that he believes the private sector should be playing within the healthcare system and describes what he thinks the NHS should be doing to work more closely with alternative providers. If you’d like to contribute to the debate then Tweet @benxgowland or e-mail him ben@ockham.healthcare

Mike Holmes is a GP in a large practice of 50,000 patients in York & Hull and part of a GP Federation covering 130,000. He is also the newly elected Vice-Chair, Membership of the RCGP. Furthermore Mike is a founder member of NHS Collaborate, the primary care leaders’ network developed by primary care leaders. In this episode Mike tells the story of how his practice grew across two cities, how the large GP federation emerged and what at-scale general practice has been able to deliver in York and Hull. In telling his story he outlines some important lessons about GP resilience and how it can be strengthened by increased scale.

Suffolk GP Federation is a not-for-profit organisation owned by 58 GP practices and established in 2013. They deliver a number of services including cardiology and ultrasound and Suffolk GP+, which provides extra doctors’ appointments during extended hours. In this episode Ben talks to Chair and Medical Director Paul Driscoll and Chief Executive David Pannell. They explain what the federation does and how it works and look to the future with a super-partnership and a potential role in becoming the voice of general practice locally.

Martin Ramsey is an accountant with MHA Macintyre Hudson, a firm of chartered accountants, tax and business advisers with a large presence in primary care. Martin has been involved in the development of Our Health Partnership (OHP), the Birmingham based super-practice whose progress we have been following on the General Practice Podcast. In this episode Martin talks about the process of establishing super-partnerships including the opportunities, the risks and the challenges.