PROFILE STEVE POWELL OF WEEPING CROSS HEALTH CENTRE Frontline reform
Jim Killgore meets a practice manager at ground zero of NHS reform in England
E Class Coupe and I do not have to wait long before he pulls up in what is a very nice car. Steve is a busy man and it’s clear that making time to meet with me has not been easy. He manages a group of three medical practices with over 18,000 patients – the largest in South Staffordshire – but this is only part of his current responsibilities. Steve is also Chair of the Stafford and Surrounds GP Commissioning Consortium which is one of the government’s much talked about Pathfinder consortia at the heart of its controversial NHS reforms in England. Most of the lead executives in emerging commissioning consortia are GPs so Steve is the rare exception being a practice manager. Our first stop of the morning is Beaconside Health Centre
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located in a new and spacious building on open ground adjacent to the campus of North Staffordshire University for which it serves as a student health centre. Beaconside was opened in 2005 as part of a planned expansion out of the original practice at the Weeping Cross Health Centre. Steve is clearly proud of the set-up as he tells me later in the large training and meeting room at the centre. He organised the construction of the new building – designed the layout and even chose the colours. Steve is not only business manager of the group prac-
tice but also a partner. He says this “mature relationship” has allowed the practice to grow in a managed and innovative way. “The GPs recognise that my skills are in business and
finance and their skills are in medicine. Being a partner helps keep things on an even footing.”
JOB CREATION Steve joined Weeping Cross in 1994 having before studied business and finance and run his own successful catering business. Then it was a small practice of about 4,800 patients with only two GPs and had never before employed a prac- tice manager. “No one knew what a practice manager was meant to
do,” says Steve. “I was given a filing cabinet with about 20 years of paperwork and told to build my own job really. And
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HE morning I travel to Stafford to meet Steve Powell he kindly offers to pick me up at the train station. In the email he says to look out for a slate grey Mercedes
I have been fortunate to be able to carry on doing that.” The Weeping Cross practice grew as residential devel-
opment in the area expanded in the late 1990s with the patient population being within commuting distance of both Manchester and Birmingham. In the early 2000s the practice began providing services on the campus of the University and eventually purchased land to build the Beaconside Centre. This brought an additional 6,000 patients. Just recently the practice merged with a third practice – the John Amery Drive Surgery. The combined group now employs around 45 staff including 12 GPs. In addition, five years ago Steve together with the other partners in the practice set up a separate private limited company called the Beacon Clinic Ltd offering a range of medical cosmetic treatments and travel medicine services as well as providing primary care services to the Ministry of Defence. Steve does not see any conflict between being entrepre-
neurial and also providing care in a National Health Service. He says: “Remember that GPs are independent contractors. I never
describe myself as working for the NHS. I consider I work for a business that is owned by GPs and myself. And we follow the rules and principles of business and it just so happens that the product we deliver is quality patient care.”
TAKING ON REFORM Steve’s interest and involvement in NHS reform began back in 2004 with the new GP contract and the introduction of practice based commissioning. In 2005 Weeping Cross joined with five other practices in an informal group which over the years evolved into the Stafford and Surrounds Practice Based Commissioning Consortium. It now includes 15 practices representing 145,000 patients with a budget of about £173 million. Steve has served as chair of the consortium since its inception. “It’s all very democratic. We have elections every year for clinical lead and chair. I’ve tried to get out of it several times now but I keep getting nominated and voted back in,” he says. “The workload is phenomenal. It started out at about
four or five hours a week but now I probably put in 30 hours a week in GP commissioning. So that makes a 70-hour-plus week with my other responsibilities. It’s virtually doing
SUMMER 2011ISSUE 4
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