Investing in primary care is crucial in shifting from hospital to community, and a pioneering partnership between Operose Health and ImproveWell does just this
The Government’s 10 Year Health Plan aims to reform the NHS by shifting from hospital to community care, analogue to digital and from sickness to prevention. In an analysis of the 10 Year Plan and its recommendations1, the King’s Fund says that, in order to successfully move care from hospitals to primary and community care, there needs to be a clear plan to move resources and power away from the acute sector towards primary, community and preventive services.
While financial investment is clearly an important part of this, investing in engagement and the primary care workforce is critical and can lead to a big, positive impact for patients and local healthcare economies.
The first partnership of its kind
Operose Health recognises that its colleagues work in busy environments. People across the organisation’s 82 GP practices, Primary Care Hubs, Emergency Department Streaming Services and Urgent Care Services are passionate about providing the best care and, as a leading provider of primary care, the recruitment, retention and engagement strategies are starting from a high base level.
But to ensure Operose Health is continuously improving and listening to their teams, senior leaders are launching a three-year programme with real-time feedback platform ImproveWell, as part of the first national workforce initiative like this in primary care.
In primary care, local knowledge is critical. Colleagues in these settings understand the needs of their communities and their local context. Operose Health’s teams work to ensure a sense of stability and understand their patients’ needs; for example, 93% of Operose Health’s GP workforce is directly employed. This not only means that patients are provided with greater continuity of care, but their care is delivered by teams who know them, and their local community the best.
ImproveWell in action
Harnessing this local knowledge to improve care is what ImproveWell aims to achieve. An example of this in action is when ImproveWell was rolled out across NHS Southend and NHS Castle Point & Rochford Clinical Commissioning Group’s GP practices. During the 12-week pilot, every idea that was suggested was implemented, with 62% of these being “easy to implement”, and 46% considered “high impact ideas”.
Of the ideas submitted, 77% could also directly make it easier for staff to do their job, 54% would save staff time, and 38% focused on reducing errors. One such idea was to standardise blood tests for routine monitoring of chronic conditions. By working with the medicines management team, they were able to identify and prioritise long-term conditions, then link in NICE guidance to develop a template for release across primary care.
The impact on primary care
In busy environments like primary care, it’s easy for ideas like this to go unnoticed with teams either not having the time or the right platform to share ideas. By empowering colleagues to share their ideas and best practice across the country, using ImproveWell, Operose Health’s patients and commissioners will benefit from the shared learning of nearly 2,000 colleagues.
The ImproveWell platform’s dashboards and bespoke customer support also means senior clinical and operational colleagues receive easy-to-interpret reports to review and analyse great ideas to the benefit of the 700,000 patients who use their services.
Investing in primary care will play an important part in the future of the NHS, but it’s crucial we don’t forget about the small ideas that can have a big impact, alongside any broader system changes and funding models that might be coming. Engaging healthcare teams is a brilliant place to start when it comes to change in primary care – whether that’s to embed a wider shift from secondary care, or smaller scale changes that have an immediate positive impact on patients, add social value, and help prepare teams for shifting priorities in the future.
- https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/long-reads/10-year-health-plan-recommendations ↩︎
