Some Practice Managers have reported that they feel bringing in ARRS (Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme) staff can be confusing. The question is whether it’s worth persevering with them or whether practices would be better just focussing on their own practice staff?

Sometimes PMs may also face the quandary of where the new team member will work. Even though the practice is already bursting at the seams, the expectation is that space will be found from somewhere so that these new staff can run clinics. Or sometimes space can’t be found and so the new staff members work remotely.

Booking patients in to see the new staff can also be a challenge. They often operate on different systems to those used within the practice, taking up huge swathes of extra admin time just to ensure that the slots are booked.

ARRS staff make up over half of the additional investment that’s been made into general practice since 2019, and now make up (very) approximately 10% of the total funding for general practice. At a time when general practice finances are possibly as tight as they’ve ever been, practices have to make the most of all the resources that are available, and this level of funding is simply too large for practices to turn their backs on and thrive financially.

The situation with ARRS staff is also improving. There’s no new ARRS funding this year, so the seemingly continuous cycle of recruitment that’s been going on for the last five years is coming to an end. As practices get used to the new roles, and the new roles get used to working in practices, the value that they bring grows over time.

The numbers of ARRS staff are also very different compared with a couple of years ago. Previously, the new staff had to be shared across all the practices in a PCN, but now there are far more staff and it’s much more possible for PCNs to allocate or link staff to one or two practices, which in turn enables them to become a more integrated part of the practice team.

Reception/care navigation teams are also becoming more adept at booking patients to see the right professional. It was always going to take time to get used to such a rapid development of skill mix, but finally we’re seeing teams feeling much more comfortable with the new range of roles. Patients themselves are still taking a bit of time to adapt, but this is being helped by campaigns such as the IGPM’s Right Care First Time which practices can use to educate their patients about the benefits of not seeing a doctor every time they attend. Robyn Clark and Kay Keane talked more about this campaign in this month’s podcast.

While there’s no doubt that the introduction of the additional roles has been extremely challenging for many Practice Managers, the level of resource they now represent for general practice, along with the improvements to how they’re working with practices, means that they’re worth the effort for PMs, with more benefits to come in future as they become better embedded into individual practice working.