Suffolk Primary Care is a super-practice incorporating twelve original practices with 33 partners covering 110,000 patients. Nick Rayner, their Executive Chair and Neil Macey, their co-Chief Medical Officer with responsibility for transformation talk to Ben about bringing the practices together. They explain the journey they followed, the benefits, what they are achieving together and how a solution has been found to the problem of property ownership.

Show Notes

Neil and Nick introduce themselves (58secs)

The journey to Suffolk Primary Care (1min 39secs)

A single practice from May 2019 with partner groups (3mins 38secs)

From shadow form to a single entity with an executive team (4mins 25secs)

What we’re doing – employee staff record (5mins 41secs)

Provider support function – centralising admin functions (6mins 50secs)

Central finance function (7mins 18secs)

Complexity (7mins 40secs)

Keeping practices on board – trust and communication (8mins 05secs)

“Bottom-up” design of services (8mins 57secs)

Employing a Chief Executive (9mins 46secs)

Clinical services (10mins 35secs)

Long term conditions (11mins 17secs)

Introducing new roles and “growing our own” (11mins 52secs)

Maintaining flexibility with new roles (13mins 06secs)

The introduction of Primary Care Networks (14mins 16secs)

Becoming a PCN? (15mins 50secs)

Single CQC registration (16mins 45secs)

Sharing central services (17mins 17secs)

New income streams (17mins 40secs)

Recruitment and retention of partners (17mins 59secs)

A “property solution” (19mins)

The challenge of introducing the property solution (20mins 20secs)

Advice for practices in a similar situation (21mins 49secs)

Finding out more (23mins 11secs)

The Suffolk Primary Care website is here

Email Nick at Nicholas.rayner@nhs.net

Or Neil at Nmacey@nhs.net

Dustyn Saint is a GP in Norfolk with an interest in IT from an early age. In 2017 he and an equally enthusiastic practice IT manager began to develop a set of tools on EMIS Web to be used in his own practice. But, from little acorns mighty oaks grew. Dustyn began to focus more of his energies on optimising EMIS and sharing his tools with other practices and this eventually led to the birth of Primary Care Pathways. In this episode Dustyn describes the journey to what is now an ever-evolving set of searches, templates, protocols and documents optimised for EMIS web and available to all.

Show Notes

Dustyn’s interest in IT (58secs)

Working with EMIS Web (2min)

Making the system more useful for clinicians and patients (2mins 57secs)

GPs reaction to the changes (3mins 56secs)

Allocating Dustyn’s time (5mins 19secs)

Sharing the learning (6mins 26secs)

National interest (7mins 28secs)

The involvement of EMIS and not reinventing the wheel (8mins 50secs)

Doing it “properly” – a team of nine (9mins 45secs)

Uptake of other surgeries (10mins 56secs)

A separate limited company (11mins 21secs)

Developing the offering for practices (11mins 38secs)

The enhanced package – tailored training and support (13mins 36secs)

Feedback from practices (14mins 14secs)

Working with Primary Care Networks – new roles and metrics (15mins 49secs)

Is it critical to be on the same system? (18mins 26secs)

Advice for using IT in a network (19mins 55secs)

More information (21mins 10secs)

The website is available here

And Dustyn can be contacted at dustyn@primarycareit.co.uk

Executive coaching can be defined as a professional relationship between an experienced coach and a client which is designed to enhance the client’s leadership capabilities. Dr Karen Castille is a skilled, qualified executive coach who has considerable experience of working with clinical leaders. In this episode she explains what coaching is, how it works and how it can benefit those in leadership roles. She also talks about self-coaching and her book “The Self-Coaching Workbook”.

Show Notes

Karen describes her career in leadership roles in the NHS (45secs)

Defining coaching “a structured conversation…to unlock potential” (1min 23secs)

Coaching is ACE (2mins 06secs)

Often about “dealing with difficult people” (2mins 51secs)

Does coaching have any practical outcomes? (4mins 10secs)

The relationship between client and coach (5mins 31secs)

Achieving personal goals through coaching (6mins 33secs)

What can coaching achieve? (7mins 38secs)

A hypothetical example (8mins 22secs)

Developing a tangible plan (9mins 08secs)

The coaching process – is not therapy (9mins 56secs)

The advantages of coaching as a development opportunity (11mins 22secs)

Finding a coach (13mins 33secs)

How much does coaching cost? (14mins 23secs)

The length of a coaching session (14mins 57secs)

Getting coaching funded (15mins 31secs)

If you can’t access coaching - try self-coaching (16mins 14secs)

What is self-coaching? Why write a handbook? (17mins 02secs)

Self-coaching as a reasonable alternative or an addition to coaching (18mins 29secs)

Contact Karen and find the book (19mins 24secs)

You can contact Karen via email here

Karen’s website (where you can find The Self-Coaching Workbook) is here

The book is also available at Amazon here

Robert Varnam almost needs no introduction. He is a GP in Manchester and Head of General Practice Development at NHS England. He will be known to most people in general practice for his work around the national Time for Care Programme. In his second visit to the General Practice Podcast he talks to Ben about the development of Primary Care Networks and how the learning needs of PCN clinical leaders might be identified and met.

Show Notes

Robert describes the recent changes to his role – focussing on improvement (58secs)

The introduction of Primary Care Networks (1min 54secs)

Variations in the progress of PCNs (3mins 28secs)

How delivering “improvement” to general practice is impacted by PCNs (4mins 44secs)

Establishing the PCN – a collaborative opportunity (6mins 54secs)

Making the best use of the development resources available (8mins 32secs)

Networks using expert facilitation to support development (10mins 24secs)

Developing the PCN clinical directors – a collective approach to leadership (12mins 40secs)

The value of investing in leaders (14mins 30secs)

A network of networks (15mins 04secs)

Establishing the learning needs of clinical directors (15mins 44secs)

Working with peers (17mins 29secs)

Practical resources for networks (18mins 57secs)

Contacting Robert (20mins 05secs)

The website Source4Networks can be found here

Robert can be contacted directly at robert.varnam@nhs.net

The first podcast we ran with Robert can be accessed here