General Practice – Creating Capacity Through Effectiveness, Not Volume

Our Panel:

• Nick Downham – Independent Health & Social Care Improvement Specialist and Director of Cressbrook Ltd
• Steve Boam – CEO, Develop Consulting
• Simon Bricknell – Senior Consultant

Host: Darren Jones

Key Topics:

• Practices aren’t seeing more patients, they’re seeing the same patients more frequently
• If you take all people seen on a Monday, a third will return within a month
• 19% of all GP consultations are products of “failure demand”
• Long-term frequent attenders had median continuity rates of just 33%
• These patients were seeing 20 or more individual GPs over a three-year period
• Research draws on data from over 15,000 practice improvement sessions and work with more than 3,000 general practices
• “GPs are reflecting back to us that they feel like they’re seeing more patients or the same patients more times. Capacity is still needed in their practices, therefore they’re not getting through the lists and access is suffering as well as quality of care.” – Steve Boam
• “The most difficult one out of the seven for me that practices really struggle with is variation. People are working in practice in their own silos, seeing maybe the same presentations, but have no idea of the resulting actions and whether that varies from the next clinician.” – Simon Bricknell
• “More activity does not mean more effective care. Fundamentally, clinicians and patients control your resource use, not managers. We must understand and revalue the work of general practice.” – Nick Downham

Who Should Listen:

Practice managers, GPs, PCN leads, healthcare commissioners, and anyone working to improve primary care capacity and effectiveness