We have aligned SmartLife with the direction of travel taken by the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England to ensure that our services help practices, PCNs and ICBs deliver on their service requirements. 

The Modern General Practice Access Model is designed to improve communications and access between patients and practices. Most of the complaints around primary care have been from patients who have been unable to get through to their practice or access care in a timely manner.  

Our products provide regular updates showing how your practice is operating against key DHSC targets and identifying vital trends in capacity, access, patient satisfaction and workload.  

Capacity and Access Payments  

The Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to Primary Care has two central aims which SmartLife can assist all practices with achieving: 

• Tackling the 8 am rush and reducing the number of people struggling to contact their practice and

• For patients to know on the day they contact their practice how their request will be managed. 

The IIF National Capacity and Access Support Payment is paid directly to PCNs to help practices implement the new requirements. 

 In addition, the IIF Local Capacity and Access Improvement Payment will be paid based on a commissioner assessment of a PCN’s improvement in three areas over the course of 2023/24.  

• Patient experience of contact;  

• Ease of access and demand management  

• Accuracy of recording in appointment books.  

 Products such as SmartFlow, SmartFlow+, SmartCall and SmartSearches can help PCNs meet the new requirements.

In practices where they have been implemented, call duration, waiting times and missed calls have all been reduced.

While list sizes have grown, capacity has increased and the costs of delivering excellent patient care have been reduced, as additional roles have been fully utilised to allocate patients to the most appropriate clinician.  

Book a call with us to find out how we can help you deliver on these key requirements.

Transition Cover and Transformation Support Funding  

NHS England will also be providing funding of around £13,500 to ‘support practices that commit to significant transformation with extra capacity over the next two years’. 

Funding is available to help practices tackle any appointment backlogs before the switch to the Modern General Practice Access Model.  

Practices will be able to receive an average of £13,500 in either 2023/24 or 2024/25 to enable them to pay for additional support to help them clear existing work once they have made the necessary changes to move to the MGPAM.  

The ‘Transition cover and transformation support funding’ averages £13,500 per practice and can be used for costs such as sessional GPs, additional sessions for current practice staff (clinical or non-clinical) or support from peers to share experience and best practice.

SmartLife Health’s team of experienced healthcare transformation experts are available to provide consultations to practices and PCNs to help them complete a smooth transition to the new model, including appointment and workload audits, stakeholder and patient communications and optimising your ARRS workforce to match the demographics of your patient lists.  

The difference a year can make: Turning a practice from ‘Inadequate’ to ‘Good’ in 12 months

Primary Care Service Development Funding  

 The Service Development Funding is for investment in initiatives which will support practices and PCNs to deliver high-quality primary care and the ambitions of the Delivery Plan. 

£169.9 million will be allocated to ICBs to support primary care transformation and not be used to fund business-as-usual staff. Its overall aim is to deliver an improved experience of access for patients, better continuity of care and improved job satisfaction.  

The primary care transformation budget now includes practice resilience and transformational support including supporting improvements in service delivery, support demand and workload management and help with staff recruitment and retention.  

SmartLife Health can help practices, PCNs and ICBs improve health outcomes such as proactive monitoring of LTCs, improving and updating LTC prevalence lists and supporting risk stratification as part of local population health strategies. 

Whether it's new ways to manage an increased diabetes prevalence, identifying 'hidden' patients or identifying trends in patient health such as obesity or mental health and their impact on workload, we can develop bespoke solutions to help. 

"The SmartLife Health team are very knowledgeable, demonstrating extensive experiences and flexibility to help primary care become more resilient and sustainable."

Head of Primary Care Brent CCG