Highlights from GP Improvement Week

Running from the 9th to the 13th of October, GP Improvement Week was centred around enhancing and streamlining the patient journey through the practice and wider health system.

It was an insightful week at The Burns Practice that saw a collaborative effort involving a multitude of healthcare organisations in Doncaster. Its primary objective was to release GP capacity, ultimately leading to improved patient access and experience.

At the heart of the initiative was a rigorous examination of the processes followed in patient care. As the practice ran its day-to-day operations, the team in the Command Room collected and analysed all the data and information that was coming through from the practice systems to spot critical blockages and identify potential ways to improve.

Over the week, patient records were entered more than 9,200 times and the office staff received over 1,200 calls. This intense activity highlighted the need to streamline processes between primary and secondary care. For example, dealing with more correspondence electronically, practices would potentially save thousands of admin hours, which in turn would help to improve patient access to general practice.

The staff at The Burns Practice worked hard during the week, making sure to run daily operations as normal while also providing data and information to the team in the Command Room. The Admin team commented on the week saying “Although the processes took a bit longer than usual, we have worked as a team and got through it and the feedback has been very positive so it was definitely worth it.”

Laura Sherburn, CEO of Primary Care Doncaster and Senior Responsible Officer of GP Improvement Week, shared her thoughts on this pioneering initiative:

“When we were approached with the opportunity to run a GP Improvement Week, I was immediately intrigued about the potential that this could unlock, for the practice staff and patients alike. The involvement of health system partners, to work collaboratively in analysing and identifying where the patient journey could be improved, is really important. This project offered a way of doing this systematically and “real-time”, over 5 days. Although it was a lot of work, the practice staff really pulled out all of the stops. Thanks to their efforts, we were able to catalogue multiple improvements that we can now implement in Doncaster. This will not only reduce workload for staff but will also have a positive impact for patients.”

One of the most heartening aspects of the week was the engagement with patients. Over 100 patients interacted with representatives from the practice’s Patient Participation Group, discussing their preferred methods of communication, plus sharing their experiences and gratitude for the practice. This direct feedback was invaluable, providing insights into patient challenges within the Health and Social care system and giving us food for thought on how we could work together to reduce these.

As we reflect on the success of GP Improvement Week, we’re filled with gratitude for the tireless dedication of the staff at The Burns Practice, their patients and all the organisations participating in the initiative.

The commitment of everyone involved is a testament to the potential of such collaborative and real-time initiatives in enhancing patient care. We are now working with our healthcare partners across the health and social care system in Doncaster on short, medium and long-term projects based on the findings of the GP Improvement Week, to make the improvements to patient care that we identified.

Watch the video below with some highlights from GP Improvement Week: