Successful Primary Care At Scale Working – Your People
In Part 3 of this short series of articles, we looked at Your What and I asked you to think about the alternative forms you considered. And if those forming the at scale entity are willing to embrace real change.
In this article, I look in more detail about “Your People”. As a reminder, Your People asks you about your engagement with your staff and stakeholders about the collaboration? This also includes your commissioners, who clearly have a key role in being engaged in your collaboration plans. How much do they all understand and support your proposed changes? Do they understand the detail of what those changes will mean for them?
There are significant changes that will result from the creation of an at scale entity. From a patient perspective, patients themselves and groups that represent them will clearly have have views and opinions about the changes the at scale entity will generate. Some changes will impact directly on the ways patients access services and their representative groups will want to be assured about equality of access and the services being provided. So, you must take time to engage effectively with patients and patient groups, demonstrating you have explained the changes in a way they understand, you have elicited their views and you have incorporated their feedback where possible.
Similarly, your stakeholders will hold a wide variety of views about your proposed changes. Not all stakeholders will have the same view, so it is important you understand who your stakeholders are, develop an engagement strategy that allows you to present your plans and hear their views, and to be prepared to make changes if necessary.
The way you communicate with patients and stakeholders during you transition period is equally important. It is no good undertaking some engagement and listening to views if you are not going to communicate that you have listened to people. And to make sure you use a variety of ways of undertaking your communication. Not all those you want to engage with use the same media channels or methods of communication. Make sure these are appropriate to your specific audience. Don’t blindly follow a “best practice” guide that delivers outcomes that are not appropriate to your patients and stakeholders.
And of course, the final external communication you need to consider are your commissioners. Your CCG and most likely, NHSE. Missing these groups out of the communication and engagement loop is unlikely to contribute to the success of your project. And it will not make you too popular to boot.
The final “people” dimension to developing an at scale entity is clearly your staff. Your staff must feel engagement is "genuine" and that they are properly involved in delivering change. Practices have legal obligations towards staff when considering change and it is often worth considering using specialist staff to provide advice on some of the more intricate aspects of employment law, change management and TUPE. Commissioners often focus on this issue and need assurance service continuity will be maintained during transition and will ask for evidence staff dialogue and engagement has been appropriate and meaningful.
To help GP Practices understand where they are now and to help plan for future collaboration, we have developed the At Scale Readiness Assessment. You can use this free, easy-to-use tool to test your readiness to move forward. Quick to use, you will receive a PDF assessment based on your responses. And an opportunity to talk over your assessment with one of our At Scale advisors. Try it now at https://at-scale.co.uk/tools-and-resources/at-scale-readiness/
The next article will deal with Your How in more detail. This will aim to demystify what makes for successful at scale working. Try out the At Scale Readiness Assessment while you wait.