The GP practice is the first place that most people go when they have a health problem. Nationally, about 100 million same day appointments are made across nearly 9,000 practices across England, about a third of the overall visits to practices in a year.
A small change in general practice can have a significant impact on flows to other parts of the urgent care system. Effective and timely responses in General Practice benefit patients and reduce acute referrals to Hospital. Ensuring General Practice develops a rapid and effective response in every practice should be a fundamental part of every urgent care strategy.
In May 2009 a report ‘Urgent Care in General Practice’ commissioned by the Department of Health and with the widespread backing of the profession was sent to all practices, PCTs and SHAs in England (for full report click HERE).
We are now looking at further support for practices to translate what they need to do, highlighted in the report, into how to make it happen (developing a web based tool). We are now working with over 300 practices across the Country who submit a week of practice data into our web based tool providing us with information about calls, appointments as well as questions about how they work in the practice. We put this alongside other information, including patient experience from the latest General Practice Patient Survey. We also have developed a ‘reception quiz’ that looks at variation in response to potentially urgent calls across the reception team. We then prepare a report that analyses the practice’s performance on access and urgent care, how this compares to others across the Country and offers some practical suggestions for making improvements.
For an independent view of our developing work with practices on access and urgent care CLICK HERE for the article in the HSJ on 24th November 2011 ‘Improving Urgent Care: The beast of many heads – the continuing assault from spiralling admissions is just one of the myriad pressures that have created a monstrous challenge for urgent care services to defeat, writes Catherine Blackledge
The Primary Care Foundation was established to support the development of best practice in primary and urgent care. The three Directors bring different skills and perspectives to understanding primary and urgent health care - for more details click below:
We also work with a number of associates
Our latest report ‘Breaking the mould without breaking the system: new ideas and resources for clinical commissioners on the journey towards integrated 24/7 urgent care’ is now available to download CLICK HERE. It is published in partnership with the NHS Alliance and will be formally launched at a session at the NHS Alliance annual conference in Manchester on 1st December 2011.
We are working with increasing numbers of practice to improve access and urgent care in general practice. If you would like to know more about our web based tool and customised reports based on a week of practice data and join over 300 practices across the UK,please email Rick Stern at rick.stern@primarycarefoundation.co.uk
For an independent view of our work with practices on access and urgent care CLICK HERE for the article in the HSJ on 24th November 2011
4th round of the out of hours benchmark. You should be receiving final data for validation soon and the first open set of openly available results will be available from this website in the New Year.