Article Free Health Check tool set to benefit Cornish GP practices

EiP Team

Excellence in Practice offers a whole range of support for General Practice and this month we want to highlight our Practice Health Check tool that is available right here, from the Excellence in Practice website. Here’s why you should consider using it at your practice…

It’s free!

The Health Check is available as a free download from our website and is built in MS Excel for easy use. There have been several tools developed to support practices to map their resilience; these resilience tools have evolved from health systems in Devon and Bristol, and include the RAG tool once available in the county.

What is the Health Check tool and why should practices use it?

The Practice Health Check tool brings together a number of domains to enable a practice to map its maturity and highlight good practice, whilst identifying areas for improvement. The tool has not been developed to point out bad practice, but instead allow practices to review, consider and develop action plans to improve its resilience, business functions and services to patients.

The tool can help to provide evidence for the CQC, demonstrating self-reflection through a practice’s ability to review, monitor and reflect on how it is performing, learn from experiences and anticipate future need.

What are the domains and why are they so relevant?

There are seven domains: business, relationships, analytics, capability, responsiveness, population health and digital. The domains are then mapped into the levels of base, stable, developing, resilient and strategic. By selecting a response to each question, the tool scores and rates the practice’s current performance against the domains. This is then charted in the results worksheet, along with the ability to complete an action planning template.

Who should complete this within the practice?

We recommend for the Practice Manager and a GP partner to complete this together. However, Kernow Health also offers the chance for one of the Excellence in Practice Associates to support this as part of the free half day session available to all practices. Just use the following link and select Practice Support Visit to make a request. We also suggest that PCNs consider asking all of its practices to complete. We recognise practices may not wish to share their results but it does offer an opportunity to support PCN maturity and development. The results may identify shared needs across the PCN practices and thus help form development plans and resource requirements.

Want to learn more about what EiP can offer you?

Email us at: kernowhealthcic.eip@nhs.net and one of the team will be in touch.

EIP Team

Free Health Check tool to benefit GP practices
Free Health Check tool to benefit GP practices