What is Practice Based Commissioning?

Our practice takes part in regular discussion with representatives from seven neighbouring GP practices with the aim of improving services for patients in our locality and style them specifically to the needs of our patients in this area. Projects have to be designed with the following objectives in mind: - improvement of existing services or provision of new services with the aim to increase efficiency for specific areas of care. Each project when complete has to meet the approval of a committee at the Hampshire PCT before it can be implemented. Practice Based Commissioning (PBC) is the name given to this process.


Although it is a slow and drawn out process, our locality has successfully created a scheme which is now working in the community where, if a patient, who is chronically ill, has sudden medical or social needs which otherwise would necessitate an unexpected admission to a hospital bed, a process of assessment of needs (rapid response) is put into place encompassing social care, rehabilitation and provision of community nursing care, that can result in avoidance of that admission to hospital.


This has benefits for the patient who can be maintained in his or her home despite their increased needs; it also has financial implications as there is a very high cost attached to each acute admission. The principle behind PBC is that where savings have been made such as the above example, the savings are fed back into the locality to pay for more services, rather than being absorbed back into the NHS pot as a whole.
We were also successful in streamlining the administration of cataract surgery for our patients in this area


We are currently engaged in projects in other subjects such as Chronic Obstructive Airways Disease, Cardiac Failure, Prostate Cancer treatment, Pre-operative assessment and Gynaecology outpatient assessment and Dermatology referrals. Some of these projects are in the advanced stages of development and may be due for approval by the PCT soon.
The locality committee meets on a monthly basis and also meets with wider agencies every three months, including community nursing, PCT, social services, as well as representatives from the local council and the general public.


We would welcome any feedback, from our patients regarding local services that they feel could be beneficial, to be explored as both a possible service not just for our patients registered at Wistaria & Milford but for in our locality.


Dr David Read
Practice Commissioning Lead for Wistaria & Milford Surgeries