CareFlow is pioneering new models for planning and managing workforce in Primary Care.
As part of the General Practice of the Future Program being delivered in partnership with NHS England and the Academic Health Science Networks, CareFlow is looking at practical ways we can innovate the way General Practice can be managed to help release GP time, and generally, reduce strain on an increasingly overloaded service. CareFlow is made up of three complementary modules.
As part of the General Practice of the Future Program being delivered in partnership with NHS England and the Academic Health Science Networks, CareFlow is looking at practical ways we can innovate the way General Practice can be managed to help release GP time, and generally, reduce strain on an increasingly overloaded service. CareFlow is made up of three complementary modules.
- GP Demand Prediction: a national populational model and primary care workforce model, predicts service stress points up to 15 years in the future, at GP and CCG level.
- GP Workforce Substitution model: provides each GP its own portal where best practice in workforce models (using pharmacies, nurse practitioners and physiotherapists to best effect) can be modeled, evaluating impacts on both financial and GP contact hours
- GP Workforce Management: helps turn strategy into action be providing the tools to continually monitor and refine new workforce models. It also introduces the concept of a Virtual GP, where local health resources, including GPs Physiotherapist and Home Carers can be pooled, can dynamically called upon by local practices, in an administratively efficient way.
We are actively looking for GP Practices and CCGs to trial our soon to be released Beta service, Please get in contact info@nqminds.com if interested
How it works
The demand modelling tool uses a national aged demographic model combined with NHS statistics on typical consultations, to create a dynamic demand model. The impacts of local development plans can also be incorporated and the demand model can be tuned using deprivation or health indices.
Demand Modelling
Collaborative research between WAHSN and various NHS bodies has produced workforce substitution models. Based on presented ailments and staff skill levels it is possible to estimate the typical number of GP consultations that could be efficiently handled by other staff. These models can generate new proposed workforce strategies.
National data relating to GPs registered to a practice is loaded into the database. This data can then be added to and refined by the practice manager, including non GP clinical resources. Typical trends relating to retirement, new recruits and staff churn allow us to model the workforce changes in a fine-grained way.
By combining the demand and workforce models and exploring various workforce substitution scenarios it is possible to calculate the financial impact (positive or negative) going forward. The system can include contributions care quality measures and in future will provide links to skills marketplaces.