(Time to read: 4 minutes)

The recent (and ongoing in some areas) period of bad weather brought into sharp focus the need for GP practices to have in place some effective – and workable – contingency plans. After all, patients continue to need care, often increasingly so in periods of cold.

‘Business continuity’ which could also apply in the case of fire, flood, natural disasters, a major road traffic accident, industrial action and even flu pandemics, needs to be an integral part of every practice’s policies. So much so, in fact, that the CQC inspection’s key line of enquiry S5 considers how well a practice anticipates and plans for potential risks to the service. During an inspection it will look at what arrangements are in place to respond to emergencies and major incidents.

Practices should therefore ensure they have identified core, essential services and can maintain these when faced with disruption – or have a plan in place to help recovery happen faster.

Building a continuity plan

To help practices put together a business continuity plan both NHS England – click here – and the government – click here – have put together in-depth toolkits. NHS England also offers a continuity plan template, which can be found here, while some CCGs or local area teams have developed template business continuity plans of their own.

While the toolkits are handy, some of the blanks are relatively tricky to fill in. Therefore, when planning, practices may find it useful to collaborate with other users of their premises or with neighbouring practices. This can be particularly important for services that operate from a single location or when the issue affects multiple services (such as bad weather or influenza).

Arrangements should be responsive to incidents that have a short, medium or long-term impact on the running of the practice. Some scenarios to consider when developing a business continuity plan, the CQC suggests, are:

• Significant numbers of staff could not come into work
• IT systems were disrupted significantly
• You could not use your premises for a period of time
• Paper records were destroyed or damaged beyond use
• A supplier was unable to deliver essential goods or services.

A robust plan should:

• Name a person responsible for delivering business continuity
• Reflect local risk registers and NHS England’s Core Standards for Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response
• Set out key functions needed to deliver services
• State a maximum acceptable disruption time for these functions
• Describe how the key functions will be restored within the maximum acceptable disruption time
• Identify key materials, external services or staff required to maintain patient care.

Top tips

With the above in mind, here are ten top tips to help you keep your practice up and running:

Identify critical business functions: Once critical business functions have been identified, it is possible to apply a methodical approach to the threats that are posed to them and implement the most effective plans.

Remember the seven ‘P’s needed to keep your business operational: Providers, performance, processes, people, premises, profile (your brand) and preparation.

Agree and document your plans: These should never just be hidden away in the mind of the managing director. Assess your critical suppliers to make sure their business continuity plans fit with your objectives and are defined within your contract.

Make sure plans are communicated to key staff and patients: It’s important everybody knows what the processes are in the event of an emergency.

Try your plans out in mock scenarios: Test your plans as thoroughly as possible – it’s often only when plans are put into practice that issues will arise.

Understand your IT: Cloud-based data management, remote access, the internet and even social media mean it’s easier than ever for service provision to be maintained.

For example, when none of the three GPs from Harleston Medical Practice, deep in the heart of rural Norfolk, could make it into work during last week’s heavy snow, tech came to the rescue. Practice manager Maria Flood said: “All of our GPs set off at 6am to make the 30-minute journey into work but all ended up stranded. They had mobile Wi-Fi and laptops in their cars so were able to make calls and triage patients as usual whilst awaiting rescue.” For the record, Maria made it into work – for the full story click here.

Tech can be great, but make sure everybody knows how to use it in advance of any problems. 

Make sure your continuity plans are nimble and can evolve quickly: If your plans look the same as they did 10 years ago, then they probably won’t meet current requirements.

Avoid box-ticking: Plans which get the tick against the ‘to do’ list but don’t actually reflect the practice’s strategy and objectives are unlikely to succeed in the long-term. Instead, ensure your plans allow you to get back up and running in a way that works for you.

Issue skis to staff: OK, so this one need not be too high on your agenda but in last week’s snow one GP reportedly went to work on skis. Alas, the heroic effort was futile as no one else could get to the surgery!

How did you deal with the snow and ice? What continuity planning do you have in place? Let us know by commenting below or head along to the Practice Index here.

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