DDA24: Fight the financial fright of general practice

DDA Board Member Mark Stone closed the DDA24 conference with a presentation on fighting the financial fright of general practice.

In his presentation he highlighted challenges facing general practice including rising costs and patient demand, as well as the politics and decreasing funding.

Detailing innovations to optimise practice workload and costs, Stone recommended the following:

Workforce optimisation and reengineered patient pathways, eg use paramedics, advanced nurse practitioners and nurse associates to do home visits and GP, pharmacists and women’s health nurses to care for acute illness
Active development of clinical teams to coordinate areas such a QOF IIF, vaccinations, NHS health checks, medicines reconciliation and document processing
Enhance administration staff skills
Use Enhanced Access (EA) hours for income generating services
Respond to increase staff absence: change contracts to reduce sickness remuneration
Use technology

Specifically looking at dispensing income, he recommended changes to practice including paperless medication requests and using prescription vending machines, enhanced pay for Saturday opening, and outsourcing tasks to care coordinators.

To avoid the dispensing at a loss trap, he advised practices to design a formulary that reduces use of ‘no discount available’ items and to prescribe and endorse loss making price concessions by brand.

View the presentation

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