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Achieving Best Practice in Out of Hours Care
Over the past year the national spotlight has often been focussed on Out of Hours care, and in particular, primary care services offered to patients between 6.30pm to 8am, throughout weekends and across bank holidays.
Questions are being asked about who provides care, how care is provided, how many doctors are on call to cover a PCT population and whether home visits are still provided. This has been prompted by the enquiry into the death of a patient in Cambridgeshire and the subsequent internal review of Out of Hours services by the Department of Health. As patients ourselves, we all want the security of knowing that primary care services are available to us and our families when we need them.
Agencia Consulting has leading-edge experience of developing GP Out of Hours care. Over the last year, Agencia has been working with an integrated health and social care organisation to review Out of Hours care, benchmark current services and develop new models for the future. Agencia has worked in consultation with local GPs, service professionals and patients to ensure that effective governance and continuity of care are provided effectively, responsively and efficiently for the PCT population served.
Andrew Gibson, Managing Director of Agencia, talks about how best practice in GP Out of Hours can be achieved:
“From our experience, we have found that the most sustainable, successful and forward looking GP Out of Hours services involve developing a service specification for a GP Out of Hours service that meets all emerging national requirements and has the involvement of local staff and service users. Additionally, it is important to develop an Unscheduled Care Commissioning Strategy that seeks a more integrated approach to the provision of the services forming the unscheduled care pathway. Services can be further enhanced by working with social care staff, health clinicians and service users to transform the provision of intermediate tier, rapid response and complex case management; providing a seamless, integrated, service. All this needs to be underpinned by a Workforce Development Strategy that reflects the strategic plan and medium term financial strategy of the organisation.”
To find out more about this work, call Andrew Gibson, or email us at info@agenciaconsulting.com
Contact us now on +44 (0)1482 649900
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