Agenda item

The Panel considered a report about the successful bid and £2.95m award for The Prime Minister’s Challenge Fund to improve the access to Primary Care in Slough across seven days.  The bid was one of only 20 approved across the country, although there were in excess of 250 applications.

Details of the pilot programme, co-designed by all 16 practices across Slough with involvement of the majority of their member Patient Representation Groups, were set out in the bid document ‘Steps to the Future’ (attached to the report as an appendix).  Practices had formed four clusters, with one operating as a hub, to provide access for all patients.  Access was now available at the four hubs from 6.30pm to 8pm Monday to Friday and (from August) for 8 hours on a Saturday and 8 hours on a Sunday.  It is expected that most appointments will be booked in advance or on the day to suit working people and to plan for patients with longer term needs.  The pilot will provide an extra 48,000 GP appointments over a 12 month period.

In addition, a range of other projects to support the extension to seven day working had been planned to improve the experience of Primary Care for patients:

• Phone texting – text reminders for appointments, ability to cancel by text, messages to targeted populations for immunisation, health checks etc.
• Mobiles for urgent contact – direct line contact to health care professional for patients with complex and unstable conditions.
• Patient Reference Group leaders to help design a programme of support moving them towards a self-supporting action learning group to further engagement with the wider community.
• Working with Patient Reference Groups, practice staff and voluntary services to design a Slough system for sharing information to keep well.
• GP active support for self-help groups for those with long term health issues.
• Referrals by GP or nurse for exercise programmes, where the whole family can be involved.
• Patient Access programme – technological solutions to accessing a GP appointment eg. email or skype consultations.
• Working with GPs to manage and improve their consultations, training in consulting with small groups of patients.
• Patients working with front line GP practice staff to understand the pressures and opportunities, co-design of first contact services to patients.

The Panel was informed that £1.8m was the full 12 months cost of the new GP cluster services to run to 31^st March 2015.  £1.15m will be managed by the CCG on behalf of the GP practice clusters to deliver project management and the transformation and innovation projects in line with the budget.  Funding for the project is for one year only and will need to self-fund to be continued.  At present it is proposed this can be achieved through a reduction/ minimisation of growth in Secondary Care costs, reduced use of 111 and GP out of hours services.

From answers to questions the Panel noted that:

• The CCG was in the process of recruiting six full time GPs, additional nurses and admin staff.
• Slough was about 10% below the England average for the number of GPs, although it had high needs associated with deprivation, poverty and the high incidence of conditions such as diabetes.
• The pilot scheme would show how effective the new arrangements were but initial results indicated a very positive reaction from staff on the benefits of working together.
• While there was concern that the funding for the scheme was non-recurrent, the CCG was in discussion with NHS England about co-commissioning of Primary Care and the use of budget for service transformation, which together with the savings through reduced impact on secondary care referred to above, should enable the scheme to continue.

Resolved -  That the report be noted.