This book is written for people working in primary care, who want to understand more about how they contribute to improving the health and health care of the populations that they serve, and for people working in public health, who want to understand the essential contribution of primary care to improving health. It sets out the nature, purpose and relevance of public health approaches to primary care practitioners and primary care organizations.
Primary care teams have had a long established role in public health, providing preventive services to populations, through the registered population in general practice. This model of a registered practice population has withstood multiple reconfigurations and reorganizations within the NHS and is the envy of many countries trying to create a public health system with primary care as its heart. There are clear differences in approach, with the inevitable conflicts between the rights of the individual set against the responsibility to ensure services are delivered fairly and equitably to whole populations. this book explores this dilemma, showing how people working in primary care can cross the divide to become part of the public health system, and in doing so are well placed to make a difference to the health of their populations.

This guide helps undergraduate medics and junior doctors, as well as experienced doctors taking on new managerial responsibilities, to become effective leaders and managers by introducing both management and clinical leadership theory and practice, and the challenges facing medical managers in today's NHS. Despite growing recognition of the importance of leadership and management to doctors in meeting their clinical responsibilities, training in medical schools and foundation years remains patchy. This book helps readers to access relevant theory and practice through three key tenets: *

'This excellent primer offers useful, simple practical advice: where to start, how to know how you're doing, and how to take simple steps to improve care for patients. It will be useful and used by clinicians across the health service.' Professor Martin Roland, in his Foreword 'The concept of clinical governance places a central responsibility for quality on the shoulders of those managing and leading within the health system. To one degree or another, that means all of us.' From the Introduction This book provides readers with an invaluable set of tools to convert the endless challenges for quality and myriad opportunities for improvement into meaningful and useful change. It begins by considering how to manage primary care organisations in order to improve quality of care. Patient perspectives on quality are examined initially, moving onto market mechanisms and commissioning which are increasingly being used as levers for change. It also considers how general practices are regulated and held accountable for the quality of the services they provide. All healthcare professionals work within teams, organisations and the wider health system. How these are designed and managed greatly determines individual and team effectiveness. Refl ecting on this, leadership, management and the right organisational culture are reviewed. Prompts for personal refl ection are included throughout the book, enabling practitioners and students to use personal experiences to transform the services provided. It also explores various techniques used for assessing and measuring quality of care, commonly used quality improvement frameworks along with the burgeoning sciences of process control, systems and spread. Quality Improvement in Primary Care is a highly practical introductory primer for quality improvement, relevant to every individual working and learning in primary healthcare and the wider health service.

The Quality and Outcomes Framework has deeply divided UK general practitioners. I commend this book and applaud its determination to scrutinise every aspect of the Quality and Outcomes Framework -- good and bad and in-between. -- From the Foreword by Iona Heath General practice in the UK faces transformation following the introduction of the Quality & Outcomes Framework (QOF), a pay-for-performance scheme unprecedented in the NHS, and the most comprehensive scheme of its kind in the world. Champions claim the QOF advances the quality of primary care; detractors fear the end of general practice as we know it. The introduction of the QOF provides a unique opportunity for research, analysis and reflection. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of the QOF, examining the claims and counter-claims in depth through the experience of those delivering QOF, comparisons with other countries, and analysis of the wealth of research evidence emerging. Assessments of the true impact of QOF will influence the development of health services in the UK and beyond. This book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the future of general practice and primary care, including health professionals, trainers, students, MRCGP candidates and researchers, managers, and policy-makers and shapers.