LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT
GP-led commissioning will fundamentally change the NHS. North West GP Dr Raj Kumar, chairman of the NHS Clinical Leaders Network, talks to NHE about making the vision work.
IN
the new world of GP commission- ing, accountability will change
fundamentally. Currently the focus is on the primary care trusts having ownership of budgets and commissioning decisions, but soon it will be the job of GPs. And they will need information at their fingertips to make the right decisions.
Dr Raj Kumar is currently working with the NHS Clinical Leaders Network (CLN) to develop the thinking and the planning for this shift of responsibility from PCTs to teams of general practitioners. In the North West, a GP-led commissioning fo- rum has been established to consider the implications, working alongside regional partners – NHS North West, Advancing Quality Alliance (AQuA) and the North West Leadership Academy.
“The CLN is a multi-professional leader- ship network and one of its key roles is to ensure that clinicians actively participate in delivering change processes. GP com- missioning is going to have a significant impact on primary care clinicians and so we have established this forum as an ena- bling and support mechanism for frontline GP leaders to take this agenda forward,” says Kumar.
The forum is operating as a pilot in the North West and in time it may form the
first step in a national infrastructure for shared learning on commissioning. Information, data and IT solutions has clearly been identified by the forum as one of five key issues for GP commissioning.
In one session, clinicians discussed wheth- er electronic patient records would become increasingly important and, if so, how they should be made more interoperable.
Kumar states: “In primary care we have very effective clinical systems but what we don’t have are systems that talk flu- ently to multiple secondary care providers. Hospitals, for example, are still working with paper notes and clinicians rarely in- put real time information on a patient di- rectly into an electronic system.
“As the Government wants a more plural health and care system which allows ‘any willing providers’ to be a part of the evolv- ing service delivery markets for secondary care services, there is a well identified need to access information and information technology that joins all the various evolv- ing dots across the landscape of service provision.
“And GP commissioners are going to need clear, real-time data on those providers, the quality of those providers, the tariffs and the range of choices available to them.
“We will need better communication be- tween providers and commissioners that transcends the patient journey from refer- ral to discharge so that we can understand why clinical decisions have been taken by providers, the financial implications of these decisions and outcomes. Without this GP commissioners cannot hope to offer value for money and drive up better health outcomes for their patients. ”
One of the challenges, however, will be the pace of change. The CLN, with re- gional partners across the country, is now looking at a series of action learning sets to help prepare clinicians specifically for change in this area.
Kumar observes: “One of our concerns is that PCTs will disappear faster than GPs can take on these complex leadership roles in commissioning so we are planning a strategy, together with other stakehold- ers, that can be ena- bled by workshops for skills develop- ment and networking between consortia in the region.”
Dr Raj Kumar
FOR MORE INFORMATION E:
cln@nhs.net W:
www.cln.nhs.uk
national health executive Mar/Apr 11 | 37
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84