Challenges | Approaches to achieving and sustaining buy-in from referring GPs |
---|---|
Lack of awareness among referring GPs of the aims and purpose of the scheme | • Engaging GPs in dialogue during the development of the scheme |
 | • Practice outreach through roadshows/practice visits |
 | • Opportunity to be involved as a triager |
 | • Regular newsletters/educational sessions on common referral issues |
Cynicism and mistrust among GPs with respect to the achievements of the scheme | • Piloting systems and presenting evidence of success |
 | • Performance management of RMCs to ensure quality of patient care is not affected |
Resistance to changing referral behaviour | • Offering incentives for referring through the RMC |
 | • Presenting bespoke data to practices at level of individual GPs to enable benchmarking |
Frustration with bureaucracy | • Ensuring parsimony in administrative processes, e.g. evolving to include all specialties |
 | • Ensuring GPs are kept up to date with changes to processes through regular communication/newsletters etc. |
Challenge to clinical autonomy | • Moving from purely administrative to clinical triage (based on the assumption that feedback from a fellow clinician would be better received than that from ‘some manager or clerical person’ [Int. B4]) |
 | • Taking the approach of changing referral behaviour through education alone (with GPs retaining ultimate responsibility for referral destination) |
 | • Providing feedback to GPs on their referrals that supports education and learning |
 | • Ensuring that the tone of this feedback is moderate and advisory |