Scaling up a clinical effectiveness approach to drive up quality and reduce unwarranted variation in general practice

For over 20 years, a Clinical Effectiveness Group in East London has played a major role in improving health care delivery in three of the UK’s most deprived boroughs. Using a change model of ‘belief, act, motivate’, the group has helped the area become the UK’s highest performer over a wide range of GP quality indicators.

As a similarly deprived area of London, with a high disease burden and wide health inequalities, the Southwark Clinical Effectiveness Approach partnership will tap into some of the experiences of East London, in order adapt and deliver a local model.

The model aims to make the right thing to do become the easy thing to do for busy clinicians. This will help drive up quality, improve outcomes for patients and reduce variation in general practice.

With the aim of driving up quality and reducing variation in general practice, the clinical effectiveness model will be delivered across 41 GP practices in Southwark, which together have more than 300,000 registered patients. 

The team aims to undertake approximately 12 individual clinical improvement initiatives (over a two-year period), covering a range of clinical areas, starting with atrial fibrillation. To engage these GP practices it will be vital to ensure the intervention makes clinicians’ lives easier, improves care for patients, and that the chosen clinical areas are aligned to financial incentives.

The model is based on: ‘belief’ (guidelines, education and awareness-raising among stakeholders and clinical leaders); ‘act’ (using trusted templates to support evidence-based practice, regular feedback through analytics and making understanding real-time data core to the daily work of clinicians); and ‘motivation’ (cross-practice learning and aligning incentives to clinical effectiveness areas). 

Contact details

For further information about the project, please email Nick Harris, NHS Southwark CCG.