Practice Administrative Staff Collaborative

Phase 1

In February 2018 PASC was launched to support the development of practice administrative teams and improve GP practice processes. Six HSCPs participated in this improvement journey.

This phase of the collaborative ended with a celebratory event on 5 March 2019.

The new phase of this collaborative is now underway with 15 HSCPs and 185 GP Practices taking part in spreading the learning and impact and from phase 1 across Scotland.  For further information see our main page.

Why focus on this?

General practice in Scotland is experiencing significant challenges with a rising and ageing population who have increasingly complex needs. The General Medical Services Contract 2018 (GMS 2018) focuses on sharing responsibility to better manage the challenges of the increasing workflow. This is why the Practice Administrative Staff Collaborative (PASC) Phase 1 was launched in February 2018, to support the development of practice administrative teams and improve GP practice processes. 

Who did we work with?

Following a competitive recruitment process, four multidisciplinary teams from six Health & Social Care Partnerships (HSCPs) joined us on this improvement journey:

• Argyll & Bute HSCP
• Clackmannanshire and Stirling & Falkirk HSCPs (joint application)
• East Lothian HSCP, and
• South Lanarkshire & North Lanarkshire HSCPs (joint application).

Each team involved a selection of GP clusters, participating in a range of quality improvement activities.

Throughout this collaborative, the Primary Care Improvement Portfolio Team drew upon the vast expertise of the wider primary care workforce supporting GPs in Scotland.

What were we trying to achieve?

The Practice Administrative Staff collaborative focused on two main areas:

• Workflow optimisation - to reduce the amount of time GPs spend on correspondence management.
• Improving care navigation - to make the best use of practice appointments and resources in order for patients to be seen by the right person, right time and right place. 

The aim is to improve the overall outcomes and care experience in General Practice for people, families and staff.

How did we achieve this?

A Workflow Optimisation Digital Toolkit, and accompanying motion graphic, have been created to support practice teams to develop, test and implement processes to improve their correspondence management. A link to the Toolkit and motion graphic can be found here:

Visit our Workflow Optimisation Digital Toolkit

A Care Navigation Digital Toolkit has been created which will provide a step by step guide to implementing care navigation within GP practices and will be distributed to all GP practices in July 2019.

Visit our Care Navigation Digital Toolkit

We held a series of learning sessions and webinars at local and national level were held throughout the Collaborative to support this network and to share learning across Scotland. View PASC events

In addition to the toolkits, a further selection of tools, resources and reports are available to view and download in the sidebar. 

Impact

We continuously evaluate the impact of our work. An external evaluation was conducted during the cycle of PASC Phase 1, which you can access here.

Stay in contact

Follow the Practice Administrative Staff Collaborative conversation on Twitter:

@SPSP_PC and tweet us using the hashtag #PASC

Should you have any questions regarding the Collaborative, please contact hcis.pcpteam@nhs.scot