The Vernon and The Lanes Medical Centres has a main site based in Derby City Centre and a branch site in Littleover with a registered patient population across both sites of just under 10,000. The practice received a ‘Good’ rating at their last inspection in 2016.

The practice approached GPTF to explore the potential introduction of the GP Consultant Model following a presentation at the LMC annual conference. The practice had already embraced multi skilled and multi-disciplined roles and wanted to enhance their patient offer to fully utilise the skills and knowledge of their clinical team more effectively

The facilitators were Richard Page, Managing Partner and Dr James Burns, GP Partner, both from West Hallam Medical Centre. Richard and James were keen to support the practice sharing their knowledge and lessons learned regarding their own practice transformation and development of the West Hallam GP Consultant Model also co-designed by Dr Gail Allsopp.

The key objectives for Vernon Street and the Lanes Medical Centre were to;

• Review current appointment structures of all clinical points of contact
• Review GP activity and establish more appropriate personnel to execute task where possible to release time
• Explore GP Consultant role
• Explore clinical team make up

Following a couple of succession of facilitated discussions with the Partners and Management, Richard and James were able to support the practice to explore the make up of their workforce and how roles could be more fully utilised. Vernon Street also wanted to pursue the employment of a Clinical Pharmacist to their team and the facilitators were able to support the role design and induct the new recruit at West Hallam spending time with the GP, ACP and Clinical Pharmacist staff.

The practice has taken the initiative to embed the learning from the West Hallam model and made significant changes to improve the way they deliver patient services. The top impacts and benefits achieved by the practice from the support are highlighted as;

• More efficient use of clinical resource following practice restructure

• Standardised process bringing better efficiency for appointment triage

• Successful recruitment and induction of Clinical Pharmacist

• Better supported Practice Manager

 “GPTF provided must needed clarity support and structured timeout to focus on the Practice structure…. without GPTF, the restructure would still be on my to do list!”

Karen Lloyd, Practice Manager, The Vernon & The Lanes Medical Centres

Working alongside an anonymous practice to support them through key partnership and managerial changes which left the practice with significant workforce shortages at a time of high patient demand.

Our objectives were to work with the Partners and Management to increase clinical capacity, explore recruitment needs and observe their day to day administration operations to identify areas for improvement.

Sandy Tomlinson, GPTF Change Facilitator and the GPTF team have delivered a number of facilitation and coaching sessions with the practice team. A summary of our activities to date are;

• Coordination of a locum GP to cover regular sessions via Derbyshire Medical Chambers to increase clinical capacity at the practice
• Recruitment and induction support for a new Practice manager
• Support for HR processes including team performance and appraisal and signposted to external HR support
• Support to explore alternative finance systems and processes including finance and claims resource pack, purchasing policy and financial delegation
• Support provided to review administration team’s role, function and job descriptions
• Identified improvements for patient Care Navigation within the reception team
• Supporting the practice to acknowledge the tremendous amount of change from the last 12 months with a planned team building day
• Observations and recommendations in regard to reception and waiting areas and staffing
• IT training on searches

The practice has worked incredibly hard and with our support to achieve the following;

• Successful recruitment of a Practice Manager who is gaining confidence in leading the practice team

• Successful transition of a locum to Salaried GP

• Enabled the surgery to work more effectively as a team

• Organisational structure with nominated leads is becoming more established

• Company polices updated and communicated with the team

• Structured system now in place for claims

• IT system training coordinated to included summarising, coding and scanning

• Practice accounts transferred to computerised software

• Practice has greater engagement with PCN network

There is further work planned with the practice as agreed in the following areas;

• Further support for team development and structure embedding positives
• Care navigation/ Receptionist Toolkit training
• Support management with staff appraisals
• Support with embedding practice finance package
• Practice correspondence and workflow

“The support has enabled the surgery to work more effectively as a team, share ideas and help to improve the structure of the surgery. There has been great feedback provided to myself and the partners to enable us to move forward. Our GPTF change facilitators have both been great.

I would most definitely recommend GPTF to other practice teams.”

Practice Manager

Sandy Tomlinson

Sandy is an experienced Practice Business Manager with a multitude of skills including team and leadership skills, HR and personnel management, service development and strategic management. She is also a trained mediator who can assist with varying levels of mediation. Sandy has worked with GPTF since 2019 and has a strong work ethic.

Her business and practice knowledge as well as her ability to unpick the root cause of issues accompanied with her empathetic skills make her an excellent member of the GPTF family.

Call 01332 210008 speak to the GPTF team or visit our website https://gptaskforce.com/ to find out ways in which we can help Practice teams across Derbyshire.

GPTF is commissioned by Derby and Derbyshire CCG and funded via GPFV monies to provide practice support.