A leading doctors’ group has argued that greater collaboration between practices can help GPs deal with increasing workloads, Carter Lemon Camerons’ healthcare partner Andrew Firman has said.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the General Practitioners Committee (GPC), has made the case that forming networks can help make it easier for surgeries to deal with the ever growing volume of work being pushed on them by secondary care.
Speaking recently at a Westminster Health Forum event, Dr Nagpaul said that the details included in the 2016/17 GP contract were critical for establishing the best way forward.
“The most important thing at this moment in time is to create these collaborative structures – I call them networks – to encompass federations and other GP provider organisation. [They will] provide support so practices can continue to function,” he said.
“The current contract already has a flexibility for practices to work together, share staff, share services and provide cross-cover when one practice is down, [but] we’re not exploiting that flexibility in the contract. It’s something we really need to be doing much more of.
“And that will be much easier if there was a formalised network arrangement that provided management support so all practices were trained and prepared for a CQC inspection, had back office functions and support.”
At Carter Lemon Camerons, our team has a wealth of experience helping clients in the healthcare profession and can offer guidance on the legal issues attached to forming a GP Federation.
