PRACTICE MATTERS  PARTNERSHIP AGREEMENTS


Mark Jarvis of Capsticks LLP considers the changing primary care landscape in England and Wales and the need for revised partnership agreements to reflect the move toward federated practices


Future proof your partnership


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FIRM foundation is essential for any business venture and as we progress down the road set out by Simon Stephens in the Five Year Forward View, we are seeing a wide range of


flexibility in approaches towards new models of care. With a strong emphasis on integration between primary care,


community services and hospitals, the new models of care envisage GP practices working together with a range of other providers. Such arrangements may be complex and involve several layers of governance and representation. The multi-specialty community provider (MCP) models envisage GP practices working in federations to realise this. Federating itself is being driven by a range of motivating factors,


whether these are to achieve economies of scale, to bid for new services with an integrated function, to provide staffing support, to share a premises solution or to achieve any number of benefits from collective working. The message of “form follows function” has been key to GP practices intending to work collectively – the aim being to get prospective federating practices to sit and consider what their business plan is to enable an appropriate federating vehicle to be formed around that business plan. Key amongst all of this is governance – ensuring the intentions


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of the parties are properly and comprehensively documented. The relationships, liabilities, decision-making, exit strategies and more will all need to be agreed on and documented. Federating groups have been keen to ensure the robustness of collective working arrangements; however, the foundations of these federations and new models of care will be the GP practices themselves. What hope then for collective working if the foundation itself lacks governance?


GP PARTNERSHIP DEEDS For the majority of GP practices, ensuring appropriate governance is in place will mean a well-drafted and comprehensive partnership agreement. However, surprisingly large numbers of GP practices operate without a partnership agreement or one that is up-to-date. The absence of any written agreement doesn’t mean there is no


agreement at all. Instead it means the agreement that does exist will be governed under the Partnership Act 1890, which can have entirely undesirous consequences. For example, this will include immediate dissolution of the partnership on notice of death, and capital and profits being shared equally (regardless of contribution). This can have disastrous consequences for the primary care contract that underpins the practice. It should also be noted that where a partnership holds


AUTUMN 2015  ISSUE 13


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