For cash-strapped GP practices, maximising every income generation opportunity is an absolute must. Whether it’s increasing revenue from extended and enhanced services, maximising QOF points or building a practice list, your patients hold the key to financial success. But just how do you ensure people know about your services and, hopefully, use them? The answer…

GPs in England should become salaried employees of the NHS, rather than be partners who run their own practices, according to controversial proposals published by a leading think-tank today. The Institute of Public Policy Research says this move, which would overturn the model of general practice that has been in place since 1948, would enable…

  Technology is specifically designed to help make life easier. This applies to healthcare as much as any area of life, but is the new NHS App – rolled out across the country last year – a good example of such technology and a good use of NHS resources? The NHS App, which is slowly…

This is the first article in a series of three looking at grading practice staff salaries.  What’s a job worth? I tend to adopt a simple approach to judging what salary a job is worth. My approach is partly based on knowledge of NHS grades and salaries, and partly based on common sense. The NHS…

For practice managers, one of the biggest headaches is staffing. Recruiting new staff, retaining existing people, managing salary (and pension) costs and generally ensuring a practice has the right balance of personnel is tough. Then there’s the CQC’s safe staffing agenda to worry about. According to the CQC, Safe, effective staffing is about “having enough…

Across the pages of the Practice Index blog, one of the common themes that keeps cropping up is the need – and attempts made – to free up resources. Whether it’s a push to save time and free up appointments, cut wastage, reduce drug over-prescribing or an automation of tasks, plenty of schemes have been…

Finding it hard to respond to negative patient reviews? Here are a few tips from Yorkshire Medical Marketing to get a positive outcome for your practice. After a long day of juggling a phone that never stops ringing, a long line of patients and not enough appointments to go around, you’d probably prefer to stick…