This is the second conversation between Ben and Paul Deffley, Hove GP and clinical director of Practice Unbound; a not-for-profit organisation devoted to “helping general practice work smarter”. In this episode Paul uses the example of a pathology delegation pilot to look at how practices can effectively work together across networks, how they can better manage change and, working at scale, deliver network solutions to collective problems.

Show Notes

Paul outlines his background and his positive view of PCNs (48secs)

An example of working together – a pilot for pathology delegation (2min 55secs)

Tests not needing a clinical context (5mins)

Understanding the pathology activity – what’s safe to delegate (6mins 07secs)

Clinical variation in pathology requests – and reducing requesting patterns (7mins 20secs)

Managing the delegated requests – a non-clinical team approach (8mins 37secs)

Group consultations? Testing different ways of managing patients (9mins 16secs)

Overcoming the concerns about risk (9mins 47secs)

Understanding the fears (10mins 59secs)

Grouping routine tests (11mins 17secs)

Auditing the administrators (12mins 54secs)

The impact on GP workload – 90% of routine bloods are handled by the admin team (13mins 27secs)

Working smarter (14mins 05secs)

Clinical variation down (15mins 02secs)

Is this a legitimate use of PCN time and energy? (15mins 33secs)

PCNs looking at individual GP practice (16mins 49secs)

Establishing and maintaining trust (18mins 37secs)

The impact of networks on shared problems (19mins 47secs)

Making the most of development funding (20mins 47secs)

An end-to-end flow exercise (22mins 49secs)

Positive relationships (23mins 33secs)

Further information (24mins 20secs)

Practice Unbound’s web address is www.practiceunbound.org.uk

And Paul can be emailed directly at [email protected]