Network of general practices aims to improve standards

Network of general practices aims to improve standards Quality Practice is a national network of general practices that will extend core activities, share services and increase efficiency.

Most people will have noticed that there is something up with the NHS and that Jeremy Hunt is no white knight, no matter how much he tells us he is. To expect GPs, facing a funding freeze despite burgeoning demand driven by demographic change and heightened consumer expectation, to come riding over the horizon may seem unlikely. However, that is what our new network of high-quality general practices, Quality Practice, is setting out to do.

Quality Practice is a national network of general practices that is designed to enhance standards of patient care and lift medical morale, as well as to strengthen practices by extending their core activities, share back-office services and increase efficiency, so that general practice will be able to deliver more for less, for everyone.

So, why form the Quality Practice network? Simply, because there seems to be no prospect of external investment in general practice. Quality Practice intends to bring new NHS and private income streams into practices. This may sound more like business than the caring profession but investment in primary care has been identified as a prerequisite for an effective healthcare system, and the NHS is not going to achieve the necessary shift of provision of more complex care into the community without it.

Sixty-five years on, Nye Bevan would readily recognise the general practice of today, and in that lies both its success and its weakness: personal, local and responsive on one side, but disparate and poor at working more corporately as a health community on the other. This builds in inefficiency and slows the adoption of new ways of working between practices, and, at least in part, explains the considerable variation in performance.

How can we achieve more consistently high standards? Albert, our social network platform, developed by Interact Intranet is our solution. Albert allows our member practices to work as one large virtual practice, pooling their talent, enhancing their practice and that of every member practice, with every good idea they share.

We also have a growing number of small federations, drawn together by geography, and in inner cities, the formation of "super practices" such as the Vitality partnership, which employs dozens of GPs. These might be seen as competition for the Quality Practice model but also clearly demonstrate that the need for change is not just being felt on the ground, but acted upon.

So how will Quality Practice differ? The Quality Practice model differentiates itself by scale: our ambition is to get to a total of around 500 member practices over the next four years, to both maximise economies in shared services and to provide local outlets for regional and national contracts. Ownership will also differ, with our member practices owning shares in the organisation.

They will have to have an outstanding commitment to continuous quality improvement that is essential for sustaining our relationship with NHS and other commissioners.

Setting up this sort of organisation at this time in the NHS's evolutionary stage means we have to contend with practices barely coping with everyday demands. But, working with our foundation practices in London, Manchester, Bristol and beyond, we are convinced that we have the model right. Funding is tight in practices, and so our financial model has to be solid. This was successfully tested in a public fundraising session through Crowd Cube recently, bringing in two more early investor practices and more than 40 private investors.

Greater consistency between general practices while simultaneously providing an extended choice of services for patients, as varied as chemotherapy and eyelid surgery, are essential traits of future NHS general practice. Achieving this is how Quality Practice will re-set general practice as the cornerstone of the NHS.

Dr Simon Bradley is founder and medical director of Quality Practice Guardian Professional.