PSUK Annual Conference Report ‘Inform, influence and innovate’
Mark Stone
York Racecourse was the venue for the 8th PSUK annual conference, over 100 delegates, 40 manufacturers attended to network with colleagues and hear the 7 speakers talk on the future of general practice, dispensing and the NHS.
Dr David Jenner of Collumpton practice started off proceedings with a fantastic presentation of the Five Year Forward View, the future of the GP practice model, and work force issues. David painted the picture of the funding bust that general practice has faced since 2004, where money had consistently dropped in real terms year after year and was now around 8-10% down. The funding situation was as David put it made worse by the ever increasing demands burdened upon general practice, consultations in GP practices had over doubled per patient registered since 1995. David then summarised the BMA 2015 survey of general practice, and you could certainly understand why the survey communicated such gloom from its respondents; 71% stated the workload of being a GP negatively impacted their commitment to continuing as a GP, contributing to over a third of GPs who said they planned to retire in the next five years. The conference was told in no uncertain terms that these work force pressures could destabilise general practice. However, David went on to say that there were some opportunities to mitigate some of the workforce issues that practices were experiencing. New models of general practice were introduced such as federations, or networking to work in association with other practices to create economies of scale. The expanding of GP teams was another idea to help, with the up skilling of nurses, and introduction of clinical pharmacists to divert workload away from GPs. David said that the recent pilot funded by NHS England, and championed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and the Royal college of GPs would forge a model where the clinical pharmacists working for the GP practice would develop a multi-skilled expert team.
The financial climate discussions lead nicely to Jim Mandeville’s presentation, a Chartered accountant who specialises in general practice. The presentation centred on ways to improve the management of your practice to ensure the business was maximising all opportunities for income. He suggested practices looked at maximising the current income by reviewing supplier arrangements, and looking for new sources of revenue such as research work.
The conference held a number of workshops where attendees could hear from either Andrew Lockhart (a senior partner at Lockharts solicitors) on GP federations, or Andrew Downing (Practice Manager) and Mark Stone a (Pharmacist Practice Partner at Tamar Valley Practice) on the issues and myths of dispensing. Mr Lockhart took participants through the risk and benefits of federations, and the mechanics of forming a successful federated organisation. While the delegates at Andrew’s and Mark’s workshop worked in small groups identifying their dispensing and practice challenges.
Matthew Isom the chief executive of Dispensing Doctors Association was next to speak, Matthew described the work the DDA was doing to help ensure dispensing was a sustainable business. Lastly, Heidi McVay (PSUK Director of Commercial Services) and Mark Stone described the opportunities that improving adherence to respiratory inhalers could bring for the patients, the NHS, dispensers and manufacturers. Mark stated that if patient adherence improved the number of inhaler items dispensed would increase by a third while hospital admissions and outpatient costs would drop significantly. Heidi McVay then finished the day by highlighting the hard work that PSUK was doing to develop services to support practices. She informed the attendees that PSUK was passionate about informing their practices, influencing the agenda and innovating to enhance their members businesses.
To discuss opportunities to work with PSUK & attend the National Conference and other events, please contact the PSUK Business Development Managers below;