Five steps to incorporating innovation in your practice

Everyone in general practice agrees things need to be different, but as soon as specific changes are mentioned barriers go up – with this in mind, here are five ways you can introduce innovation to your GP practice

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on Ockham Healthcare

Words from Sir Sam Everington declaring the need for Skype consultations to become the norm in general practice send shivers down the spine of most GPs. Likewise declarations that the traditional partnership model is dead, and that “super-practices” and their ilk must become the new norm.

GPs readily admit the need for change, for innovation, but not Skype consultations or super-practices. Or telephone consultations. Or physicians’ associates. Or social prescribing.

How do practices wanting to make change overcome this particular problem? Here are five steps to introduce innovation in a GP practice.

Don’t start with the solution, start with the problem

Any practice looking to make changes will be doing so for a reason. If the workload is unmanageable, the workload is unmanageable. Focus the initial discussion on this as the problem and establish a sense of urgency that something must be done. Be clear that no change is not an option.

Develop options

Giving a choice of options empowers decision makers. Listening to the arguments of those against an option can help develop even better options. Some pharmacists for example could offer a range of different roles, or reduced drawings to fund extra GP sessions, or merger with another practice as ways of coping with the unmanageable workload. Keep the focus on solving the problem, not on any specific solution.

Create a critical mass of support

There will nearly always be someone in any GP practice who is against whatever the change is. Once it has become clear which is the best option it may be that those most in favour of the change need to do some work outside of the meetings to firm up support for the change.

It is all too common for one all powerful voice to continually veto the introduction of any meaningful change. Where this is happening, others need to work together and plan how to get the final approval required.

Create a worked-up solution that reduces risk

A good way of getting the change to happen is to provide a way out, whether that is a review after six months or a short-term contract before offering a permanent one. At this point the work of those in favour of the change is only beginning.

They need to mentor and support the new recruit, manage their introduction into the practice, support their professional development, and problem solve with them. The experience of those who have done this is that six months later the practice can’t imagine how it ever coped without the new member of staff in place.

Use one successful change to enable further change

When practices agree to make one big change, and have a positive experience of it, they are much more likely to take a risk on the next one and make further and further innovations. It is no coincidence that practices who introduce new roles are often larger, building whole system partnerships, and looking for ways to make the new models of care work for them.

Identifying innovations is relatively easy. Getting them to happen in your practice is not. The innovation problem in general practice is not a lack of ideas, but the difficulty of adoption, and of changing the behaviour that goes with it.