Amongst the host of new roles available to PCNs are First Contact Physiotherapists (FCPs); a service designed to signpost patients directly into a physiotherapy service and therefore saving valuable GP and GP referral to treatment times. As this is a relatively new concept for most, we speak this week to Larry Koyama, Head of FCP Implementation at the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy to get the lowdown on what an FCP actually is, what the role can offer in terms of supporting practice efficiency, the suggested models for successfully embedding FCPs in both an employment sense and in terms of integration within the wider network, the lessons learned so far and more.

Introduction (35 secs)

The background to Larry’s role (46 secs)

Making the case for First Contact Physiotherapists (1 min 34 secs)

What is an FCP? (2 mins 34 secs)

What is the difference between a Physiotherapist and an FCP? (3 mins 38 secs)

Patient pathway and service access (4 mins 28 secs)

Crunching the numbers; caseload and appointment sizes (5 mins 11 secs)

FCPs per population size (5 mins 52 secs)

Lessons learned so far (6 mins 51 secs)

FCPs within the wider practice and network teams (8 mins 19 secs)

Optimising working experience within a network environment (10 mins 3 secs)

3 suggested employment models (12 mins 37 secs)

Exploring the implications of direct and indirect employment (14 mins 21 secs)

Current availability of FCPs (15 mins 45 secs)

Larry’s final thoughts on making the most of your FCP (16 mins 46 secs)

Finding out more (18 mins 27 secs)

 

Please visit the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy’s website for a range of resources from making the business case for employment of an FCP to supporting implementation and tools for evaluating the effectiveness of the role.

The link to the Phase 3 FCP evaluation data Larry refers to is here