Develop Consulting wins NHS contract to improve General Practice
Develop Consulting, a Coventry-based improvement consultancy specialised in process and organisational improvement, has been awarded a national NHS England contract to support general practice in the implementation of efficiency improvements.
The project, known as Productive General Practice Quick Start, forms part of NHS England’s ‘Time for Care’ programme. The programme provides a support package to practices with the aim of helping them improve their quality care and work processes, whilst improving patient outcomes and staff wellbeing.
Over the past three years, the growing number of frameworks, tools and best practices have been made available to England’s 7,000 general practices. To date, more than 1,000,000 hours of practice time has been released, with over 2,000 practices taking part.
The effectiveness of the programme was illustrated in the town of Bury. In the space of just eight weeks, NHS Bury Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) managed to embed improvements that saved two hours per day of GP time and 650 hours of admin time per annum.
As part of Time for Care’s objectives, the plan is to extend support to a further 2,000 practices over three years. Appointed a consultancy and implementation partner, Develop Consulting will work directly in practices to help design and implement new processes to support more efficient working.
“It’s great news for our team. We know how important this support is to general practice at the moment and with national media continuing to take a larger interest in their work, this is a great opportunity to show what can be done,” said Max Pardo-Roques, Commercial Director at Develop Consulting.
According to Pardo-Roques, there is strong demand for further support as general practices of all sizes face “considerable ongoing challenges”, including catering to changing patient demands, growing regulatory and administrative burden and the need to digitise operations.
Steve Boam, CEO of Develop Consulting, is delighted with the mandate, stating, “Although we work for some big brand names in the manufacturing sector, the work we do in general practice is probably making the biggest impact to the daily lives of practice staff and the general patient population. We’re delighted to have the opportunity to work with NHS England on delivering such an important programme.”
