Image of Bill Graham We spend our lives going through changes – changes as we grow physically, changes as our emotions mature and we adapt to the changes the world throws at us – whether its new technology or the latest diet to adopt to change us for the better!

Before you read the rest of the blog, it’s important for me to highlight I’m focusing on self-initiated change to drive innovation and not the change that many across the NHS will have to experience due to recent announcements by the government regarding the running of the NHS.

In healthcare the holy grail may well be continuous improvement for staff and patients indeed as Nora Colton, Professor of Leadership and Management for Healthcare at University College London said: “We need to speed up we need to learn faster – AI can help us with that too! If your staff is not learning all the time your practice is falling behind – embrace continuous learning – dynamic learning for GP practices will be part of your strategy “

I had a change to my life late last year when I was asked to lead and facilitate a Community of Practice (CoP) in Bradford for the Health Foundation funded Innovation Hub, that is badged ‘primary care through a community lens’. It’s not been a big upheaval but I’m certainly spending much more time on the CoP than I envisaged! You’ll notice I’ve introduced an acronym there – CoP – even our acronyms change and evolve.

Our introductory session in December was a lot of fun, throwing several people together with similar experience to share what works and what might work better. As we got to know each other there was bonding and building of trust in the room. Our second session in January focussed on what change is and how it can manifest. It was an illuminating session that covered a lot of ground, including how I have been part of a continuous change journey with the Modality AWC primary care network (PCN) which is now firmly seen by the team as one GP practice operating from 11 buildings that serves 87,000 patients. So we are one single PCN – one practice and one PCN – a big change for all concerned, staff and patients!  We also discussed and shared how a will to do things better can drive change and innovation and how AI is already helping many of us in our roles – such as Heidi AI already being used by a number of practices to reduce time spent on writing notes (Heidi Health UK | Leading in AI Scribe Software for Healthcare) or the use of Bots to read and file patient letters

We drilled deep into Modality AWC, adopting a digital front door triage model (April 2023) to help manage demand and the pros and cons of the process. One of the drivers for this change was the unsustainable phone demand which was adversely affecting patients and staff. With the new system (Klinik) now embedded for almost two years, we do find ourselves in a better place where we can manage and cope better with the demands of patients in the 21st century. Approximately 75% of demand will be initiated on our digital platform and phone waiting times are much shorter for the patients who can’t use online. But the pain was real, for 3-4 months we were in the trough of doom – or valley of despair as we worked our way through the Dunning-Kruger Effect (see an illustration and read more on the Dunning-Kruger Effect) as patients and staff had to get used to the changes!

There is pain associated with big changes and, it can be difficult explaining changes to staff and patients, but we would never go back. General practice isn’t like it was 10-20 years ago, and we might need to be ‘real’ with patients about what they can and can’t have. But technology can help and to introduce new ways of working with Tech we need to be willing to embrace change and take our staff and patients with us.

The challenge to our system is how can we adopt and scale the use of technology? There are a lot of products on the market – and for practices it can be difficult to make an informed choice of what to use. And with many practices using different systems it can be even harder for staff and patients to keep up!

As a colleague said – our new system is not perfect but it’s a lot better that where we were a few years ago!