A West Midlands 'super-practice' covering 65,000 patients is set to expand across England following a number of approaches from other practices. The Modality Partnership, which currently spans 15 practices across Birmingham and Sandwell.
Its executive director told Pulse the last 12 months had seen an increasing number of approaches from practices around the UK, both as part of established federations and individual practices. The practices have expressed an interest in replicating the Modality model across the country as part of the same partnership, which would centralise back-office functions in a bid to increase efficiency and sustainability.
The rise of the super-practice
The GPC favours super-practices as one of the few models which could retain the 'core principles of general practice' and working at scale is one of the principles set out in NHS England's, Five Year Forward View.
The Midlands have given rise to several super-practice ventures in the last 12 months. These include the 100,000 patient, 62 partner practice at Lakeside Healthcare, East Midlands and the gigantic Our Health Partnership in Birmingham and Sutton Coldfield, which involves 200 GP partners and a list of 275,000 patients.
Often formed by a series of list mergers, super-practices are typically run by a small group of elected or appointed partners. The GPC defines it as one GP practice covering a very large patient population, potentially in excess of 100,000, and which operates from a number of sites despite being a single organisation.
And NHS England is keen for these larger GP organisations to take on new functions. NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens said accountable care organisations are the future, saying it was 'mission-critical' to 'blur the old boundaries between GP and hospital care'.
Source: www.pulsetoday.co.uk