The role of your practice within a PCN

PCNs come in a variety of shapes and sizes while also operating differently – here’s how practices can help the network to progress and succeed in line with their PCN leadership and management team

CREDIT: This is an edited version of an article that originally appeared on The Primary Care Network Specialists

How can practices help the network to progress and succeed alongside their PCN leadership and management team?

Acknowledge that there are different challenges, gaps, wants and needs between practices.

Recognising that not all practices will encounter challenges with a specific issue is crucial. While improvement initiatives driven by good intentions might not yield advantages for every member within the network, the underlying aim of such endeavours typically revolves around either…

• Bringing money into the network
• Working more collaboratively
• Taking advantage of a perceived opportunity
• Ultimately helping the practices

Practices need to remember that the network is trying to help, and PCN Leaders need to remember that equity is extremely important.

Sell the benefits of the network to the practices

Practices should pause and deeply contemplate ways in which the network could enhance its support for them.

To initiate this process, Practice Managers, GPs, and other pivotal staff responsible for practice decisions should allocate time to grasp the advantages brought by the Primary Care Network (PCN). They should also explore avenues for fostering collaborative relationships, mutual support, and workload reduction.

In situations where the practice is uncertain, they have the option to seek a review of this matter during a PCN meeting or arrange a consultation with their Clinical Director (CD) or manager. Subsequently, they can disseminate this acquired information to the entire practice.

Ensure everyone is clear on responsibilities and remit

It’s really important to understand who is doing what and for each practice to hold them responsible and accountable for the work they say they are going to do.

It’s always going to be difficult when practices aren’t fully committed, and it causes tensions when it feels like practices are carrying others.

Practices also have to acknowledge that there has to be compromise as we can’t get what we all want all of the time.

Read the information which has been presented

Most networks will regularly have a board meeting, which is accompanied by meeting papers.

We all know how busy things can get, but reading the papers in advance of the meetings is really important. Here is where you find the information you are looking for.

Practices also need to be present at meetings and turn up on time.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but is it a valid complaint to accuse the PCN leadership and management team of not providing the information because practice representatives:

• Have not taken the time to read it
• Turned up to the meeting late and then left early
• Were multi-tasking during the meeting, had their camera off and weren’t even listening

In a nutshell, it may be helpful for PCNs to be seen as an extension of the practice, with equal levels of input and output on both sides.

Acceptance of some unavoidable truths will also go some way in getting to a place of understanding and shared purpose.

Also, appreciating the following could be helpful.

• Everyone works slightly differently, and local priorities may differ, and that’s okay.
• Not everyone will get exactly what they want from the network.
• In terms of effort; the more you put in, the more you will get out.
• There may be lots of additional work in the short term, but we are all in it together and shared pain just might be a shared gain in the future.
• Priorities may change, but the patient should always be at the heart of everything we do.