Organisational Strategy for Primary Care

Digital Health & Care Wales (DHCW) commissioned In-Form Solutions to develop an organisational strategy for the newly formed Primary, Community and Mental Health directorate (PCMH). The PCMH is responsible for delivering, supporting and maintaining the digital services and systems which support clinical care delivery through GP surgeries, dentists, pharmacies, occupational health and mental health services. They are also responsible for developing health are applications that provide patients with direct access to primary healthcare services. The strategy was required to provide direction and focus to the new organisation and to explore and enhance the ways in which it delivers support and value to the Primary care services across Wales. 

The assignment involved the engagement of a wide section of stakeholders, both within and external to PCMH to gather their views and ideas to help shape the direction of the new directorate. Core themes around how the PCMH could better support primary care services through developing new services and re-focussing existing teams quickly emerged alongside a need to develop greater influence over the development of primary health care policy at a governmental level.

In order to address the needs of a complex primary care system with multiple competing priorities, the strategy was designed around 4 core principles which committed the organisation to:  Deliver Quality, Inform Policy, Build Value and Standardise and Mandate information. Supporting the principles we developed 8 priorities which formed the tangible actions to deliver the principles. These are: Creation of a new Project and Programme transition team, Development of a new health informatics research and reporting team, Development of a ‘Digital Futures’ team, Extension of the in house system development capability, Building more connectivity in-house, Development of a standards mandating capability, Implementation of standards for transfer of projects into BAU, Engagement at a clinical cluster level to create improved information flown and closer working relationships with clinicians.

The strategy has been accepted at an executive board and governmental level and the programme to structure delivery over the next three to five years has now commenced.

Our work included:

• Undertaking a scoping review to determine the current picture.
• Project planning and managing the completion of the strategy in four months.
• Working closely with the DHCW team, clinicians and patient groups to formulate the strategic principles and priorities.
• Stratifying and collating individual directorate plans to formulate the organisational strategy.
• Delivering and presenting the strategy to multiple stakeholder groups to gain their approval.
• On-going support to the senior leadership team.

“The Consultants were excellent, and the project brief was met. Expectations were exceeded and would highly recommend working with DHCW again!” – Martin Dickinson, DHCW