General practice leaders are seeking an urgent meeting with health secretary Matt Hancock over controversial orders to deliver more face to face appointments. Mr Hancock earlier this week defended an NHS England letter, sent last week, apparently ordered practices to enable patients to book face to face appointments directly. It marked the end of “total…

Why are some GP practices more profitable than others while still maintaining high standards of patient care? Does high quality patient care always cost money? Not necessarily, is the answer from James Gransby, Abi Newbury and Andrew Burwood*, who are all medical accountants specialising in advising GP practices and their practice managers on financial matters.…

It will come as no surprise that over the past 14 months, there has been an exponential increase in the number of adults reporting signs of anxiety and in those accessing support for depression. Now, over a year into the pandemic, there’s finally hope on the horizon, and while many breathe a sigh of relief,…

A new data extraction system will provide fast access to millions of practice-held patient records for planners and researchers, it has been announced. A formal notice was issued to practices this week, informing them that data collection will begin. Developers at NHS Digital say that patients can opt out of the new collection system, which…

Practices should not be put under pressure to resume non-essential services following the pandemic, GPs will say today. The annual conference of local medical committees is set to hear about the pressures faced by practices during the pandemic – and will call for improved mental wellbeing services for the practice workforce. It will also call…

GPs should continue to provide a combination of remote and face-to-face consultations, the Royal College of GPs says today. The College’s new report, ‘Future of remote consulting and patient triage’, focuses on what consultations should look like once the pandemic is over. The authors say while both options have their advantages, the decision about how…

Each of you will have a different story and will have followed a different career path as there’s no single route to becoming a practice manager. A recent survey suggested that around 50% of practice managers (PMs) had been in the job for less than five years. Therefore, to argue that a manager must have…