Primary care services in the English NHS: are they a thorn in the side of integrated care systems? A qualitative analysis.

BACKGROUND: As integrated care systems are embedded across England there are regions where the integration process has been evaluated and continues to evolve. Evaluation of these integrated systems contributes to our understanding of the challenges and facilitators to this ongoing process. This can support integrated care systems nationwide as they continue to develop. We describe how two integrated care partnerships in different localities, at differing stages of integration with contrasting approaches experienced challenges specifically when integrating with primary care services. The aim of this analysis was to focus on primary care services and how their existing structures impacted on the development of integrated care systems. METHODS: We carried out an exploratory approach to re-analysing our previously conducted 51 interviews as part of our prior evaluations of integrated health and care services which included primary care services. The interview data were thematically analysed, focussing on the role and engagement of primary care services with the integrated care systems in these two localities. RESULTS: Four key themes from the data are discussed: (i) Workforce engagement (engagement with integration), (ii) Organisational communication (information sharing), (iii) Financial issues, (iv) Managerial information systems (data sharing, IT systems and quality improvement data). We report on the challenges of ensuring the workforce feel engaged and informed. Communication is a factor in workforce relationships and trust which impacts on the success of integrated working. Financial issues highlight the conflict between budget decisions made by the integrated care systems when primary care services are set up as individual businesses. The incompatibility of information technology systems hinders integration of care systems with primary care. CONCLUSIONS: Integrated care systems are national policy. Their alignment with primary care services, long considered to be the cornerstone of the NHS, is more crucial than ever. The two localities we evaluated as integration developed both described different challenges and facilitators between primary care and integrated care systems. Differences between the two localities allow us to explore where progress has been made and why.

The challenges of integrating signposting into general practice: qualitative stakeholder perspectives on care navigation and social prescribing in primary care.

BACKGROUND: A national policy focus in England to address general practice workforce issues has led to a commitment to employ significant numbers of non-general practitioner (GP) roles to redistribute workload. This paper focuses on two such roles: the care navigation (CN) and social prescribing link worker (SPLW) roles, which both aim to introduce 'active signposting' into primary care, to direct patients to the right professional/services at the right time and free up GP time. There is a lack of research exploring staff views of how these roles are being planned and operationalised into general practice and how signposting is being integrated into primary care. METHODS: The design uses in-depth qualitative methods to explore a wide range of stakeholder staff views. We generated a purposive sample of 34 respondents who took part in 17 semi-structured interviews and one focus group (service leads, role holders and host general practice staff). We analysed data using a Template Analysis approach. RESULTS: Three key themes highlight the challenges of operationalising signposting into general practice: 1) role perception - signposting was made challenging by the way both roles were perceived by others (e.g. among the public, patients and general practice staff) and highlighted inherent tensions in the expressed aims of the policy of active signposting; 2) role preparedness - a lack of training meant that some receptionist staff felt unprepared to take on the CN role as expected and raised patient safety issues; for SPLW staff, training affected the consistency of service offer across an area; 3) integration and co-ordination of roles - a lack of planning and co-ordination across components of the health and care system challenged the success of integrating signposting into general practice. CONCLUSIONS: This study provides new insights from staff stakeholder perspectives into the challenges of integrating signposting into general practice, and highlights key factors affecting the success of signposting in practice. Clarity of role purpose and remit (including resolving tensions inherent the dual aims of 'active signposting'), appropriate training and skill development for role holders and adequate communication and engagement between stakeholders/partnership working across services, are required to enable successful integration of signposting into general practice.

'You're just a locum': professional identity and temporary workers in the medical profession.

Internationally, there has been substantial growth in temporary working, including in the medical profession where temporary doctors are known as locums. There is little research into the implications of temporary work in health care. In this paper, we draw upon theories concerning the sociology of the medical profession to examine the implications of locum working for the medical profession, healthcare organisations and patient safety. We focus particularly on the role of organisations in professional governance and the positioning of locums as peripheral to or outside the organisation, and the influence of intergroup relationships (in this case between permanent and locum doctors) on professional identity. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted between 2015 and 2017 in England with 79 participants including locum doctors, locum agency staff, and representatives of healthcare organisations who use locums. An abductive approach to analysis combined inductive coding with deductive, theory-driven interpretation. Our findings suggest that locums were perceived to be inferior to permanently employed doctors in terms of quality, competency and safety and were often stigmatised, marginalised and excluded. The treatment of locums may have negative implications for collegiality, professional identity, group relations, team functioning and the way organisations deploy and treat locums may have important consequences for patient safety.

More that unites us than divides us? A qualitative study of integration of community health and social care services.

BACKGROUND: The integration of community health and social care services has been widely promoted nationally as a vital step to improve patient centred care, reduce costs, reduce admissions to hospital and facilitate timely and effective discharge from hospital. The complexities of integration raise questions about the practical challenges of integrating health and care given embedded professional and organisational boundaries in both sectors. We describe how an English city created a single, integrated care partnership, to integrate community health and social care services. This led to the development of 12 integrated neighbourhood teams, combining and co-locating professionals across three separate localities. The aim of this research is to identify the context and the factors enabling and hindering integration from a qualitative process evaluation. METHODS: Twenty-four semi-structured interviews were conducted with equal numbers of health and social care staff at strategic and operational level. The data was subjected to thematic analysis. RESULTS: We describe three key themes: 1) shared vision and leadership; 2) organisational factors; 3) professional workforce factors. We found a clarity of vision and purpose of integration throughout the partnership, but there were challenges related to the introduction of devolved leadership. There were widespread concerns that the specified outcome measures did not capture the complexities of integration. Organisational challenges included a lack of detail around clinical and service delivery planning, tensions around variable human resource practices and barriers to data sharing. A lack of understanding and trust meant professional workforce integration remained a key challenge, although integration was also seen as a potential solution to engender relationship building. CONCLUSIONS: Given the long-term national policy focus on integration this ambitious approach to integrate community health and social care has highlighted implications for leadership, organisational design and inter-professional working. Given the ethos of valuing the local assets of individuals and networks within the new partnership we found the integrated neighbourhood teams could all learn from each other. Many of the challenges of integration could benefit from embracing the inherent capabilities across the integrated neighbourhood teams and localities of this city.

Reviving clinical governance? A qualitative study of the impact of professional regulatory reform on clinical governance in healthcare organisations in England.

BACKGROUND: Until recently, processes of professional regulation and organisational clinical governance in the UK have been largely separate. However, the introduction of medical revalidation in 2012 means that all doctors have to demonstrate periodically to the regulator that they are up to date and fit to practise, and as part of this process doctors must engage with clinical governance activities in the organisations in which they work. OBJECTIVE: To explore how the recent implementation of medical revalidation has affected the arrangements for clinical governance in healthcare organisations in England. DESIGN: Thematic analysis of interviews with 62 senior clinicians and non-clinicians in management or senior administrative roles, from a range of healthcare organisations in England. RESULTS: Revalidation has engendered changes to clinical governance systems, resulting in: increased doctor engagement with clinical governance activities; new or improved systems for access to clinical governance data for doctors and leaders within healthcare organisations; and more leverage - through the Responsible Officer role - to enforce engagement with clinical governance. Organisational context has been an important mediator of the impact of revalidation on clinical governance. CONCLUSION: Revalidation has increased alignment between systems for organisational and professional oversight and accountability, resulting in increased scrutiny of clinical practice. However, it is still a matter of conjecture whether this will in turn lead to improvements in medical performance.

Identifying and managing concerns about GPs in England: an interview study and case-series analysis.

BACKGROUND: Underperforming doctors have been the focus of sustained interest from the media, policymakers, and researchers. GPs are more likely to be the subject of a complaint than any other type of doctor in the UK, and the management of concerns in primary care needs improvement, yet more is known about how concerns are managed in secondary care. AIM: Although formal policies for NHS England's management of concerns are clear, little is known about how these are put into practice. This study explores how concerns are identified, investigated, and managed at a regional level. DESIGN AND SETTING: A qualitative study of the management of concerns in primary care across eight area teams. METHOD: The study comprised two main strands: in-depth interviews with NHS England staff; and the analysis of case file data. RESULTS: The process for raising concerns was identified as inconsistent and disparate, with potential weaknesses to address. The concerns process was flexible. A trade-off between adaptability and consistency was evident, but the correct balance of the two is difficult to establish. Performance concerns were most common, followed by behaviour. Conduct was the next most frequently raised concern, and a small number of health cases were identified. Outcomes of cases appeared to be dependent on the doctor's engagement and response rather than necessarily the nature of a concern or the consequences of a doctor's actions. CONCLUSION: The way practices handle complaints and concerns remains unexamined, even though they are a key route for patient complaints.

Reforming regulatory relationships: The impact of medical revalidation on doctors, employers, and the General Medical Council in the United Kingdom.

In 2012, medical regulation in the United Kingdom was fundamentally changed by the introduction of revalidation - a process by which all licensed doctors are required to regularly demonstrate that they are up to date and fit to practice in their chosen field and are able to provide a good level of care. This paper examines the implications of revalidation on the structure, governance, and performance management of the medical profession, as well as how it has changed the relationships between the regulator, employer organizations, and the profession. We conducted semi-structured interviews with clinical and non-clinical staff from a range of healthcare organizations. Our research suggests that organizations have become intermediaries in the relationship between the General Medical Council and doctors, enacting regulatory processes on its behalf and extending regulatory surveillance and oversight at local level. Doctors' autonomy has been reduced as they have become more accountable to and reliant on the organizations that employ them.

Policing the profession? Regulatory reform, restratification and the emergence of Responsible Officers as a new locus of power in UK medicine.

Doctors' work and the changing, contested meanings of medical professionalism have long been a focus for sociological research. Much recent attention has focused on those doctors working at the interface between healthcare management and medical practice, with such 'hybrid' doctor-managers providing valuable analytical material for exploring changes in how medical professionalism is understood. In the United Kingdom, significant structural changes to medical regulation, most notably the introduction of revalidation in 2012, have created a new hybrid group, Responsible Officers (ROs), responsible for making periodic recommendations about the on-going fitness to practise medicine of all other doctors in their organisation. Using qualitative data collected in a 2015 survey with 374 respondents, 63% of ROs in the UK, this paper analyses the RO role. Our findings show ROs to be a distinct emergent group of hybrid professionals and as such demonstrate restructuring within UK medicine. Occupying a position where multiple agendas converge, ROs' work expands professional regulation into the organisational sphere in new ways, as well as creating new lines of continuous accountability between the wider profession and the General Medical Council as medical regulator. Our exploration of ROs' approaches to their work offers new insights into the on-going development of medical professionalism, pointing to the emergence of a distinctly regulatory hybrid professionalism shaped by co-existing professional, managerial and regulatory logics, in an era of strengthened governance and complex policy change.

The Evolving Purposes of Medical Revalidation in the United Kingdom: A Qualitative Study of Professional and Regulatory Narratives.

PURPOSE: Previous research found professionalism and regulation to be competing discourses when plans for medical revalidation in the United Kingdom were being developed in 2011. The purpose of this study was to explore how these competing discourses developed and how the perceived purposes of revalidation evolved as the policy was implemented. METHOD: Seventy-one interviews with 60 UK policy makers and senior health care leaders were conducted during the development and implementation of revalidation: 31 in 2011, 26 in 2013, and 14 in 2015. Interviewees were selected using purposeful sampling. Across all interviews, questions focused around three areas: individual roles in relation to revalidation; interviewees' understanding of revalidation, its purpose, and aims; and predictions or experiences of revalidation's impact. The first two interview sets also included questions about measurement and evaluation of revalidation. Data were analyzed using the constant comparative method to understand changes and continuities. RESULTS: Two main discourses regarding the purpose of revalidation were present across the implementation period: professionalism and regulation. The nature of the relationship between these two purposes and how they were described changed over time, with the separate discourses converging, and early concerns about actual or potential conflict being replaced by perceptions of coexistence or codependency. CONCLUSIONS: The changing nature of the discourse about revalidation suggests that early concerns about adverse consequences were not borne out as organizations and professionals engaged with implementation and experienced the realities of revalidation in practice. Reconciling professional and regulatory narratives was arguably necessary to the effective implementation of revalidation.

The implementation of medical revalidation: an assessment using normalisation process theory.

BACKGROUND: Medical revalidation is the process by which all licensed doctors are legally required to demonstrate that they are up to date and fit to practise in order to maintain their licence. Revalidation was introduced in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2012, constituting significant change in the regulation of doctors. The governing body, the General Medical Council (GMC), envisages that revalidation will improve patient care and safety. This potential however is, in part, dependent upon how successfully revalidation is embedded into routine practice. The aim of this study was to use Normalisation Process Theory (NPT) to explore issues contributing to or impeding the implementation of revalidation in practice. METHODS: We conducted seventy-one interviews with sixty UK policymakers and senior leaders at different points during the development and implementation of revalidation: in 2011 (n = 31), 2013 (n = 26) and 2015 (n = 14). We selected interviewees using purposeful sampling. NPT was used as a framework to enable systematic analysis across the interview sets. RESULTS: Initial lack of consensus over revalidation's purpose, and scepticism about its value, decreased over time as participants recognised the benefits it brought to their practice (coherence category of NPT). Though acceptance increased across time, revalidation was not seen as a legitimate part of their role by all doctors. Key individuals, notably the Responsible Officer (RO), were vital for the successful implementation of revalidation in organisations (cognitive participation category). The ease with which revalidation could be integrated into working practices varied greatly depending on the type of role a doctor held and the organisation they work for and the provision of resources was a significant variable in this (collective action category). Formal evaluation of revalidation in organisations was lacking but informal evaluation was taking place. Revalidation had not yet reached the stage where feedback was being used for improvement (reflexive monitoring category). CONCLUSIONS: Requiring all organisations to use the same revalidation model made revalidation easy to integrate into existing work for some but problematic for others. In order for revalidation to be fully embedded and successful, impeding factors, such as a lack of resources, need to be addressed.

Implementing medical revalidation in the United Kingdom: Findings about organisational changes and impacts from a survey of Responsible Officers.

Objective To describe the implementation of medical revalidation in healthcare organisations in the United Kingdom and to examine reported changes and impacts on the quality of care. Design A cross-sectional online survey gathering both quantitative and qualitative data about structures and processes for medical revalidation and wider quality management in the organisations which employ or contract with doctors (termed 'designated bodies') from the senior doctor in each organisation with statutory responsibility for medical revalidation (termed the 'Responsible Officer'). Setting United Kingdom Participants Responsible Officers in designated bodies in the United Kingdom. Five hundred and ninety-five survey invitations were sent and 374 completed surveys were returned (63%). Main outcome measures The role of Responsible Officers, the development of organisational mechanisms for quality assurance or improvement, decision-making on revalidation recommendations, impact of revalidation and mechanisms for quality assurance or improvement on clinical practice and suggested improvements to revalidation arrangements. Results Responsible Officers report that revalidation has had some impacts on the way medical performance is assured and improved, particularly strengthening appraisal and oversight of quality within organisations and having some impact on clinical practice. They suggest changes to make revalidation less 'one size fits all' and more responsive to individual, organisational and professional contexts. Conclusions Revalidation appears primarily to have improved systems for quality improvement and the management of poor performance to date. There is more to be done to ensure it produces wider benefits, particularly in relation to doctors who already perform well.