What a whirlwind of a year 2023 was! With funding challenges, an emphasis on workforce wellbeing, an additional bank holiday and a new approach to CQC inspections – to name just a few of the challenges thrown at general practice – last year was a busy and difficult time for Practice Managers, but there’s a…

There’s a dichotomy between the resources that are being put into general practice and the national messages that are being given about the service. Is this deliberate, and is general practice the victim of some elaborate plot against it? Or is it simply the ineptitude and lack of understanding of those making the decisions? The…

A PM colleague who seems to be well ahead of the game forwarded this letter to me: https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/wp-content/uploads/sites/52/2020/03/C0569-Second-phase-of-General-Practice-response-to-COVID-19–update-to-GP-contracts-and-income-protection-a.pdf This innocuous looking letter has somehow sneaked into the system although I’m sure I haven’t seen it before. As always, it’s dated after some of the changes it mentions so we’re already behind before we’ve even started.…

Supporting people to play a greater role in their own health and care clearly has benefits for GP practices – not least because it frees up time – which is why the NHS detailed Self Care and Management as the ninth action in its Releasing Capacity in General Practice initiative. For practices, this idea is…

Productive work flows: Reorganising the working environment Time. It’s a luxury most practice managers just don’t have. In fact, according to the recent Practice Index Pay Survey, the majority of practice managers put in plenty of overtime, many working nearly an extra day a week. It’s an issue that’s clearly not lost on the NHS,…

None of us have the time. We’re all busy. Right now we’re fighting our way through the flu vaccines (or lack of them), putting on our battle armour in preparation for 2019, and trying to make an educated guess as to how many staff are likely to be ‘off sick’ during the winter. So there’ll…

Email. On the one hand, it’s an essential communication tool we can’t live without. On the other, it’s a time-consuming, overbearing, always-on tool that can take over day-to-day practice life. In fact, according to research released in 2012 by the McKinsey Global Institute, more than one-quarter of a worker’s day on average is spent answering and reading emails. That…