- Lloyd Price
Nottingham city’s 1st GP Federation (NCGPA) selects Zesty for extended hours appointment scheduling
1st February 2018: Nottingham City General Practice Alliance has signed a contract to use Zesty’s online appointment scheduling technology for its extended hours service.
Extended hours is primarily an NHS service designed to alleviate demand on GP practices in Nottingham city, providing 182 hours of additional care to patients every week between 4-8pm Monday to Friday and 9am-1pm on Saturdays and Sundays.
Emma Bravery, Chief Operating Officer, NCGPA commented “Our 54 GP Practices use EMIS Web and TPP SystmOne as their practice management software, however there is no appointment system that can connect to both, so we looked for an easy to use online scheduling system separate from EMIS and TPP. Having reviewed the market and spoken to a number of suppliers, Zesty’s cloud based system was the best solution for our requirements.”
Equipped with an awareness of the changing issues affecting its members and their workforce, NCGPA strives to respond to their requirements by developing innovative solutions that are both practice led and patient focussed.
NCGPA is committed to maintaining strong relationships with local organisations including, Nottingham City CCG, its partner organisations and having an active presence at high level discussions about the future of the local care landscape. These relationships will allow NCGPA to represent the voice of its members, whilst seeking necessary sources of help, funding and required resources to support and develop them.
Speaking about the partnership Zesty CEO, James Balmain said:
“We are excited to be working with Emma and her team in Nottingham on this new project to alleviate demand on local GPs and provide a convenient service to patients. Zesty continues to design and deliver robust, easy to use online scheduling software for primary, secondary and community care across the NHS and private healthcare markets.
ENDS
Notes to editors
After a year of development work, early 2016 saw the establishment of Nottingham city’s 1st GP Federation – Nottingham City General Practice Alliance (NCGPA). Comprising 48 GP Practice Provider members, and covering a population of over 335,000 patients, NCGPA is committed to combining the time honoured valued of List-Based General Practice with the benefits of working together at scale.
In the ever changing and challenging operational landscape of general practice, in recent years Practices have been encouraged to work more closely together, either in loose networks or more formal arrangements with increasingly binding agreements between practices, even up to merger into Super Partnerships holding a single contract.
In NCGPA practices continue to exist independently, with being a member of the federation allowing them to operate collaboratively with other practices in their locality. This approach provides opportunities for economies of scale along with access to funding not available to individual practices, thus equipping practices with a vehicle to obtain the resources and opportunities they require to improve or continue to deliver high quality care to their patient communities.
