I have always been the kind of person any boss would be pleased to employ – hard-working, uncomplaining and loyal.  I could always be relied on to accept those last-minute, ‘urgent’ jobs when everyone else had skedaddled off home even though they often took me extra hours or even days to complete and many times…

Much has been made in the media of Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt’s recent speech where he promised GPs a ‘new deal’ to alleviate pressure on over-stretched services, through increased investment, reduction in bureaucracy, and the drafting in of more healthcare professionals to the areas most in need. The speech was a typically politicised mix of…

The Citizen’s Charter Complaints Task Force defines a complaint as an “expression of dissatisfaction requiring a response,” and sadly, complaints within a practice are inevitable from time to time. The CQC claimed in December last year that “there is much positive practice at all stages in the process of making a complaint”, but patients’ experiences with…

In previous posts on the Practice Index blog we’ve looked at GP to patient ratios and staff to patient ratios. One area we’ve only touched on, however, is practice nurse to patient ratio, which is why in this post we’ll look to see if there’s a way of accurately calculating how many nurses you need.…

The majority of business processes have switched to digital and the healthcare sector is following suit with patient records, here’s why… Freeing Up Space The average GP practice has around 6,200 registered patients and even with just one file per patient, that equates to a lot of valuable space needed to store records manually. Digitising…

General practice networks are becoming increasingly common across the UK as practices look to share costs and resources, including workforce and facilities, or enhance the ability to bid for enhanced service contracts. But what should practice managers keep in mind when actively establishing, or joining, a GP network? The big question which impacts on most…

Your reception staff play an imperative role in the success of your practice, in their pressurised roles at the practice front-of-house, making potentially life-or-death judgement calls based on what they are told by patients over the phone. Advice-giving aside, much of the battle the receptionist faces can be won with a good telephone manner and…