‘Hands on’ support is available to practices and primary care networks (PCNs) to help make changes and improvements.

This is divided into ‘intermediate’ and ‘intensive’ offers:

• Intermediate (practice): three months of support with a facilitator
• Intermediate (PCN): 12 half-day sessions over a flexible time period
• Intensive: six months of support with a facilitator

Integrated care boards (ICBs) have been asked to nominate practices and PCNs for intensive and intermediate support, depending on practice or PCN needs. Ideally, support needs will be identified via a facilitated conversation using the support level framework (SLF). Practices or PCNs that have not yet had a facilitated conversation using the SLF can still be put forward for the hands-on support.

Please contact your ICB lead to confirm your interest as a practice or PCN and/or register to join our next information webinar: intermediate and intensive support – introductory webinar registration form.

Practices or PCNs participating in the intermediate or intensive support will need to have access to data from their telephony system.

Incentives and funding

To help practice teams make improvements there is a single capacity payment for transition cover available as part of the delivery plan for recovering access to primary care (£13.5k/practice in either 2023/24 or 2024/25).

There is also alignment between the delivery plan for recovering access to primary care and the QoF QI Demand and Capacity and staff well-being modules, and the Capacity and Access IIF Payment to PCNs, plus funded care navigation training for every practice.

Support level framework

The Support level framework (SLF) is a tool to support organisations in understanding their development needs – as there is no “one size fits all” approach to improvement.​ The SLF has been clinically developed based on knowledge and experience, together with academic research and documented best practice where available. ​It allows organisations to understand what they do well and where they might wish to do better.​

The Practice SLF should be completed via a facilitated conversation with members of the practice team with honest reflection encouraged.​ The findings should then be used alongside available data to agree priorities for improvement and development of an action plan.​ The SLF is NOT a performance management tool.​

ICBs have been asked to enable facilitated SLF conversations to take place in all practices during 2023/24, to help practices to better understand their support needs and improvement priorities.