Improvement Work in Scotland

Scottish Primary Care Collaboratives (SPCC)

The Scottish Primary Care Collaboratives is a partnership program between the Improvement Foundation and the Centre for Change and Innovation (CCI) at the Scottish Executive.

The SPCC is designed to remodel the way general practice works to improve access and reduce delays for patients and also improve outcomes for people with Long Term Conditions.

To date there has been almost 500 GP Practices participating in the SPCC. The program has provided assistance to all participating practices in the redesign of their systems and their ways of working, and will eventually involve half of all practices in Scotland.

Phase I of the SPCC focused on improving patient access to GP practices and improving the management of care for people with diabetes. The first wave of 98 practices in Phase I completed their 24 months of the program in September 2005; the second wave began in May 2004 and finished in May 2006. Phase I of the program has already shown significant improvements through the use of the Collaborative methodology.

Phase II focuses on improving access for patients and also works towards improving secondary prevention of Coronary Heart Disease. The first wave of Phase II started in May 2005 and has 89 practices participating, a further 63 practices joined the second wave of Phase II which began on May 2006.

Wave 5 began in March 2007 with 62 practices. Similar to the previous waves, these practices will again work to make improvements in patient access to GP services but alternatively will focus on improving the management of care for people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD).

Innovative approaches have included:

• Rescheduling pre-booked appointments to avoid Mondays - the busiest day of the week
• Using telephone appointments instead of seeing the GP face-to-face.
• Practice staff taking on routine work to free up nurses and doctors to use their skills to the full

 

For more information see Scottish Primary Care Collaboratives