The guest editorial for February has been written by Nick Downham, Lean Specialist and Programme Lead for Productive General Practice.  Nick presented on the topic Productive General Practice - meeting the QIPP challenge during the Expert on Call on 15th February 2012.  Follow this link to hear a recording of the session. 

Productive General Practice – Meeting the QIPP Challenge

Huge QIPP Potential

With general practice being the setting for the majority of all patient contacts and having a substantial direct influence on the activity in secondary care, general practice has a huge part to play in the NHS’ drive towards Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP). The NHS’s system level drive towards these goals mirrors the internal pressures felt by many thousands of general practices around the country as they grapple with the challenges of increased activity, an aging population, lifestyle related illness, rising public expectations, financial pressures and increased regulatory requirements.

Engages General Practice

Productive General Practice has been created with large  numbers of general practice staff, to help practices respond to these challenges. Developed with NHS Scotland, Productive General Practice is the latest in the NHS Institute’s internationally renowned ‘Productive Series’. It is designed to help general practice continue to deliver high quality care whilst meeting these increasing levels of demand and diverse expectations. It helps practices to put the patient, clinician and practice team at the centre of improvement to create a timely, appropriate and dependable response to patient needs. Implementing the programme will engage all staff in the practice in improving their work processes, making it possible to release time to invest in improving patient outcomes and staff wellbeing.

Practical and adaptable

The programme provides a proven framework that is easy-to-use, practical, and flexibly designed.  It enables all staff to take a fresh look at the changing needs of patients and develop services that will improve safety and reliability, patient and carer experience, staff experience and productivity. It helps practice teams look at their basic processes, their customer facing area and the variation between clinicians.  It can also help those practices who wish to move from a predominantly reactive to a proactive model of care.  Productive General Practice has been co-designed and tested by GPs, practice managers, nurses, receptionists and patients, as well as improvement experts from industry. 

Opportunity for CCG’s to support general practices

Stepping up a level from the practice, Productive General Practice also provides a powerful, systematic and efficient way for clinical commissioning groups to constructively engage and support the development of practices within their group – in a way that is acceptable to GPs.

The peer review, test practices and early adopters involved in the development of Productive General Practice show that it can really help practices get on the front foot.  Practices develop plans and implement them in order to ensure delivery of high quality care in this rapidly changing environment. Productive General Practice provides the improvement methods many practices have been waiting for.