One Care is pleased to have launched three new features on the General Practice Intelligence Dashboard, making data more accessible for practices.

Building on the success of the COVID-19 vaccination dashboards that practices and Primary Care Networks (PCNs) have been using to monitor the vaccination uptake among their population since the programme started in November 2020, a third dose vaccination dashboard is now live. This enables practices to track and monitor the number of patients who have taken up a booster or third primary dose vaccination.

The dashboard also allows practices to view the data by cohort (age or clinical vulnerability), and to filter by deprivation and ethnicity, providing a greater insight into the patients who have and haven’t taken up the vaccination.

Additionally, One Care has launched a brand-new feature: activity graphics, designed predominantly for use on social media.

The idea for this feature has come directly from discussions with several practices. It is hoped these graphics will enable practices to publicise and demonstrate their volume of face-to-face appointments, phone calls and COVID vaccines. Practices can adjust the time frame where necessary, giving their patients a greater understanding of the demand, traffic and success within each practice.

One Care has also successfully redeveloped the flu page on the dashboard, meaning practices and Primary Care Networks (PCNs) can monitor the uptake of the 2021/22 season influenza vaccine in their populations.

Cohorts reported on, which will be updated twice weekly, include those aged 65+, 50-64 and 2-3, as well as the clinically extremely vulnerable and clinical risk groups.

Commenting on the new dashboard features, One Care’s Head of Business Intelligence Rhys Lewis said: “We are really proud to create and release these three updates to our General Practice Intelligence Dashboards.

“Following the success of last year’s flu vaccine page, we have relaunched this for the 2021/22 campaign with a similar simple design but further detail on uptake in clinical risk groups and by level of deprivation. Similarly, we have refreshed the Covid-19 vaccination dashboard to include booster doses. All of this information can be used to celebrate the success of vaccination programmes to date and highlight inequalities and opportunities to improve population coverage and maximise income.

“The update I am most excited about is our new practice infographics. This dashboard gives practices quick and easy access to infographics that can be used to represent the brilliant work they are doing. By taking a simple screenshot, practices can share these graphics using social media or even on the screens in their waiting areas.

“We are always looking to develop new features to assist our practices and the latest ones should make a real difference in making the data more accessible and detailed which is our ultimate aim, so huge credit to everyone behind the scenes for their efforts.”

We are proud to announce that the Continuity of Care resource toolkit we helped develop has now been launched nationally by the RCGP and Health Foundation.

This toolkit combines real-life examples, ready-to-use resources, and improvement methodologies. We developed it together with Morecambe Bay Primary Care Collaborative, through the work we did with our practices as part of the Health Foundation’s improving Continuity in General Practice programme.

Through this toolkit, GP practices across the country will be able to discover the evidence behind continuity and it’s benefits for both patients and clinicians whilst also helping to support colleagues in primary care to take the next practical steps to improve continuity, regardless of their current progress.

The toolkit can be accessed .

We are pleased to be able to announce the newly appointed Chair of the GP Collaborative Board (GPCB) as Dr Jon Hayes. Many of you will know Jon from his roles as GP Partner at Hanham Health since 1999, and Clinical Chair of Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire (BNSSG) CCG since its inception as an organisation in 2018. 

The interview process was led by a sub-group of GPCB members, consisting of Dr Nicola McGuinness, Dr Sarah Pepper, Dr Richard Berkley and Dr Lee Salkeld. Ruth Taylor, Chief Executive of One Care, was a non-voting observer and the panel was chaired by an independent member, Jeff Farrar, interim Chair of the Healthier Together Partnership Board and Chair of University Hospitals Bristol and Weston (UHBW). The panel put forward their decision to the Board for ratification in early September. 

On behalf of the recruitment sub-group, Dr Lee Salkeld said: 

“We are really excited about Jon’s appointment to the role of Chair of the GP Collaborative Board. He brings a wealth of experience, knowledge and relationships to the Board at this important time in our development. 

Throughout the recruitment process, Jon demonstrated that his 20+ years of working in grass roots general practice combined with his in-depth understanding of the intricacies of our health system mean that he is perfectly positioned to lead us through the challenges and opportunities ahead. 

The Board is looking forward to working with Jon to really cement the role of the GP Collaborative Board in representing, advocating, and working on behalf of general practice in our Integrated Care System.” 

Jon will remain as Chair of the CCG until March 2022 ahead of the transition to the new Integrated Care Board arrangements from April. He will, however, step down as Chair of the Clinical Executive on 31 November. This will ensure that he is not involved in commissioning decisions about primary care and mitigate the risk of any conflict of interest. He will take up his role as Chair of the GPCB in December. Until then, he will attend GPCB meetings as Chair designate, and Board meetings will be chaired by our Vice-Chair, Dr Katrina Boutin, whose appointment we announced in early August 2021. 

Commenting on the appointment, Dr Jon Hayes said: 

“I am thrilled to be appointed as the Chair of the GP Collaborative Board. 

General Practice has achieved so much over the last 18 months – from fast-tracking digital transformation, to driving the local vaccination roll-out and managing the current surge in service demand. Practices have forged new partnerships with our populations, communities and colleagues across the health and care system – and whilst it’s been tough, we have much to build on.  

The GPCB already plays a critical role in the health and care system, and will continue to do so – particularly as we move towards the statutory Integrated Care System (ICS) landscape. It’s important that we have a strong collective voice as general practice, and as the new Chair, I’m really looking forward to working closely with all practices across BNSSG to make that happen.” 

Dr Simon Bradley held the role of Interim Chair of the GP Collaborative Board since its inception in September 2020. On behalf of the GP Collaborative Board, Dr Katrina Boutin said: 

“We would like to offer heartfelt thanks to Simon for his visionary leadership, tenacity and commitment to the Board during his time in the role. He has been instrumental in taking the GP Collaborative Board from concept into reality.” 

Simon will continue to be a member of the GP Collaborative Board in his role as Chair of One Care. 

We said goodbye to our Medical Director, Dr Jake Lee, earlier this year. We are very excited to announce that following an incredibly strong recruitment process, we have now appointed our new Medical Director, Dr Mark O’Connor.

Mark has been a GP in North Somerset since 1995. He has previously held positions with the LMC, North Somerset PCG, PCT and CCG. Recently returned from Qatar, he worked as an executive clinician within the national ambulance service to establish its first country wide integrated community healthcare service. He has a life-long interest in IT/AI and data analytics and is looking forward to playing an active part in One Care’s vision to ensure our member practices are properly resourced, practically supported and have a strong voice in the new collaborative structures to come.

We hope you will join us in welcoming him to One Care and wishing him every success in his new role.

The One Care continuity of care programme draws to a close this month. Despite the challenges posed by Covid, 23 practices took part in the project and each embarked on their own continuity of care journey. All hints and tips from the practices have been captured in a resource toolkit which will soon be hosted on the RCGP website shortly. Our data shows practices were able to improve their continuity by up to 15% across their practice list. There were even greater improvements in continuity where the focus was on a particular cohort of patients.

We’ve built a timeline of the project, which can be found here:

One of the primary  outputs of this project is a resource toolkit to help implement continuity of care in the practice. The toolkit provides:

• Practical suggestions on how to improve continuity.
  A way to measure continuity using the Usual GP Measuring Tool, developed by One Care Digital Team.  There are 4 measures available in this easy-to-use Tool.  The Tool is based on consultation activity and shows how consultation activity is spread across your practice.  For example, you will be able to see if your frequently attending patients are shared evenly across the team.
• Communication material including leaflets and posters together with an animation which you can show on our website or in the waiting room.
  The Resource Toolkit is currently on One Care Team Net but later this month it will be hosted on the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) website, following the demonstration at this year’s RCGP conference and testing by practices across England and Scotland.
  Our practices approached continuity in different ways from those who had already have personal lists looking to further improve continuity, to those testing microteam approaches, to those focusing on a particular cohort of patients. Our data shows practices able to improve their continuity by up to 15% across their practice list.  Even greater improvements were made where the focus was a particular cohort of patients.

As a project we learned:

• Through our surveys and conversations that continuity matters to both patients and staff
• Practices regardless of their list size can achieve good levels of continuity, including those that are multi-site.
• Where the practice has continuity of care processes in place, GPs on low sessions achieve continuity levels on par with GP working a high number of sessions.
• Practices in deprived areas of Bristol can achieve good levels of continuity.
• Focusing on a small cohort of patients, has a ripple effect so overall continuity at the practice improves.

We’d like to thank all the practices who were able to take part, and look forward to seeing the impact continuity plays on patients in BNSSG going forward.

According to The King’s Fund, “Integrated care systems (ICSs) are partnerships that bring together providers and commissioners of NHS services across a geographical area with local authorities and other local partners to collectively plan health and care services to meet the needs of their population. The central aim of ICSs is to integrate care across different organisations and settings, joining up hospital and community-based services, physical and mental health, and health and social care. All parts of England are now covered by one of 42 ICSs.”

The government’s recently published White Paper takes this ambition even further. Increasingly, boundaries need to be broken down between organisations in the healthcare system and new ways of working developed as providers come together to create more efficient and patient orientated pathways. General practice being able to come together as one body to participate in peer-to-peer conversations with other large-scale providers is a key enabler of this.

We are pleased to announce that in response to this need, general practice across Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire has come together to form the GP Collaborative Board (GPCB).  The GPCB brings together all practices, Primary Care Networks (PCNs) and localities in BNSSG, supported by One Care and Avon LMC.

In 2020, practices asked One Care and Avon LMC to work with them to develop and implement an ethical decision-making process and good governance framework for general practice. In September 2020, we took the decision to stand up a Shadow GP Collaborative Board to shape this framework and make decisions about what the GPCB should look like. In April 2021, the GPCB moved out of shadow form and the members came together as a substantive Board for the first time.

The GPCB has four main functions:

• Coordinating representation of general practice within system governance structures.
• Ratification of new pathways and strategy.
• Informing to ensure accurate, relevant and timely information flows to, from and throughout general practice.
• Enabling general practice to come together at scale, giving a vehicle for provider-to-provider conversations.

The GPCB has already begun to establish itself as an important partner within the BNSSG Integrated Care System.  Find out more about the GP Collaborative Board.

If you want to know more about the GP Collaborative Board, get in touch with us – GPCollaborativeBoard@onecare.org.uk.