Dear Prospective Candidate
Thank you for taking time to consider joining the Executive Team at GP Care, I am delighted that you want to find out more. The job advert, job description and person spec give you a flavour of what we are looking for in our new Director of Service Delivery, so I won’t repeat that here. I am keen to share why I, and my Executive Director colleague James, our Director of Finance and Performance joined GP Care and hopefully some of this will resonate with you in considering this opportunity.
I joined GP Care in June 2021, having spent most of my career in the NHS. The challenge of working through the Covid-19 pandemic gave us all time to reflect on what we want from life both personally and professionally. For me, I wanted a new challenge in healthcare, but be able to make decisions and implement solutions quickly and a role in which I could make a real difference.
What attracted me to GP Care was an opportunity to support the NHS in a different way, through a genuine partnership approach to tackle rising demand for services. We know that the scale of the challenge is enormous, with predictions that waiting lists could exceed 14m people, roughly 1 in 4 people and that a significant majority of people waiting require some level of diagnostics, where significant additional investment is being made. So, what GP Care does is an important part of the solution. The other key attraction to me was the reason GP Care was set up in the first place, working in an integrated way with the rest of the healthcare system – particularly Acute Trusts; Primary Care and Commissioners, providing high quality services and a great patient experience.
It is probably worth also reflecting on what I didn’t want. I was not keen on working for a big private sector healthcare provider, driven by profits at the potential expense of service quality. Whilst GP Care is a limited company, our shareholders aren’t private equity investors, they are GPs and Practice staff, many of which are retired and some of our own employees. We are also a Social Enterprise, focused on making a positive impact on the communities we serve. Over 85% of our services are for NHS patients, so the public service ethos of GP Care very much appealed to me.
James, the newest member of GP Care’s Board appointed as Executive Director of Finance and Performance, joined the organisation in August 2022 having worked as a Regional Finance Director for Spire Healthcare, but also has significant experience of working in the NHS, predominately in Acute Trusts. He was also keen on a new challenge, and having a young family, was keen to both develop his career but at the same time fully consider home-work life balance. The chance to operate at a Board level, be involved in almost all aspects of the business and yet still have enough quality time with his family were things that really appealed to James. I hope understanding some of the motivations that James and I had for joining GP Care are things that may appeal to you.
We have significant, but realistic ambitions to grow as an organisation, and our vision is simple, to provide more services to more people, closer to home. We have great patient feedback and have developed a unique service delivery model that we believe should be replicated more widely by the NHS through Integrated Care Boards. If you do become our Director of Service Delivery, you will be joining the organisation at the start of our new growth journey.
Further details are available on this microsite that tells you more about ‘who we are and what we do’ and if you think you would be excited about contributing to our continued success, then we would be thrilled to hear from you.
We are working with Anderson Quigley (AQ) as our recruitment partner for this important role. AQ have been instrumental in recruiting half of the Board members, including a medical NED; the Director of Finance and Performance and myself as CEO. They have a really good understanding of the skills and experience of the Board; our culture and will be able to give you greater insights than many of bigger healthcare recruitment agencies into what it’s like at GP Care. We wanted a bespoke approach to recruitment and AQ fits that perfectly.
Yours sincerely,
GP Care is an award winning social enterprise providing specialist health care services in the south west of England and South Wales. Since we were formed in 2006, we have seen over 250,000 patients and receive world class patient feedback with 96% of those who use our services rating us as excellent or very good. In our last full inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) we were rated overall as good (published April 2020).
We currently provide a range of services in partnership with the NHS including community urology one stop shop service to three Integrated Care Board areas, a DVT diagnostic service in Bristol and have recently expanded our service provision into Wales providing a Non Obstetric Ultrasound service, working with NHS Cardiff and Vale University Health Board to support their post covid recovery.
Mission
We exist to reduce hospital waiting lists and patient waiting times by increasing the availability of rapid access specialist diagnostic, assessment and treatment services in local health care communities. To achieve this, we work in partnership with NHS Hospitals, GPs, and Integrated Care Boards.
Our Vision
Our vision is simple ‘We want to provide more services to more people closer to home’. We want to do this as we know that our services provide timely access to treatment and are well regarded by our patients and Commissioners.
Our Service Strategy
We have developed a new Service Strategy which focuses on further enhancing our collaboration with the NHS as part of recovery from the pandemic. Instead of a lengthy document, we have developed a short 4 minute video to describe our ambitions which can be viewed here.
We aim to provide more care in the community and closer to home, taking the pressure off hospital-based services. We have a strategic partnership in its infancy with Cobalt, a registered charity based in Cheltenham where service development opportunities may arise and will continue to work in partnership with other organisations in delivery of world class services.
Our Strategic Aims
Alongside our new Service Strategy, we have developed a set of tangible strategic aims and values following engagement with stakeholders, both internal and external to the organisation. Our ambition for growth is not based on some vanity or egotistical exercise, but on increasing the benefits to the communities we serve – more patients receiving great patient care, a variety of employment opportunities for local people and playing our role in addressing health inequalities.
We aim to:
Expand services we currently operate to other areas providing high quality services to more people.
Move into other service specialties which would benefit from our community one stop approach.
Further enhance our positive culture and provide greater training and development opportunities for our staff as we expand our services.
Create strong partnerships with organisations with similar values that enhance our service offerings.
Improve service quality through innovation and by adopting practical ways of involving patients in the design and delivery of our services.
Contribute to addressing health inequalities by tailoring our services to the diverse communities we serve.
Ensure our services are financially and environmentally sustainable, achieving accreditation standards that endorse our service quality.
Our Ambitions
We have a one stop shop Community Urology service model which provides assessment, treatment and discharge all through one appointment in 3 Integrated Care Board areas (Gloucestershire, BNSSG and BSW). We provide this service in an integrated way working with primary care and Acute Hospitals. We believe this model is unique and as part of our growth aspirations over the next few years we want to promote and replicate this model in other ICBs.
We also believe that the one stop shop model is equally applicable to other specialties and are keen to work with Acute Trusts and Commissioners in how we can ease pressures in other service areas. We run a small private Minor Surgery service and we believe there is opportunity to expand this, which would enable us to re-investment more into our services with the NHS.
Our Values
It’s not just what we provide in terms of our services, it is how we provide these services which is important to us.
We truly believe that living our values of ‘Aiming HIGH’ will ensure we maintain and further improve the quality of our services for the benefits of patients. The culture of the organisation led by the Board, is based on our values and are tested in everything we do – supervision; appraisals; service development and through our partnerships.
Honesty – being fair and truthful
Integrity – listening without judgement and being respectful
aGility – being able to mobilise solutions quickly
Humility – keep an open mind and continuously learn and improve
GP Care is a flexible employer and is open to discussing alternative working patterns.
Hybrid working – Minimum three days per week in the office (Bristol).
30 days annual leave.
6% pension employer contribution.
Anderson Quigley is acting as an advisor to GP Care, an executive search process is being carried out by Anderson Quigley in addition to the public advertisement.
The closing date for applications is noon on Monday 17 April 2023.
Applications should consist of:
Should you wish to discuss the role in strict confidence, please contact Elyse Turner Pearce on +44 (0)7808 648 559 or elyse@andersonquigley.com or Helene Usherwood on +44 (0)7719 322 669 or helene@andersonquigley.com
| Longlist | April 26 |
| Shortlist | 09 May |
| Final panel | 17 May |
gpcare.org.uk 