Join the Primary Care Access Programme

We are open to applications from primary care teams including GP clusters, GP practice, pharmacotherapy and multidisciplinary teams to join Cohort 4 and 5 of the Primary Care Access Programme. Teams will receive support to understand their systems and to help improve an aspect of access over a 7-week sprint.  

Cohort 4 will offer two groups, one for teams looking to focus on pharmacotherapy and one for teams looking to focus on any other area of access.  

Please see below a breakdown of key dates for these two groups.     

Find out more about what is involved in a seven week sprint.

Benefits of joining the programme

Our expert improvement advisors will provide hands-on support to help you improve access through the programme by supporting you to:

• Explore your access challenges, including:​
  • patient demand (clinical and non-clinical)​
  • team capacity (GP and wider multidisciplinary team), and​
  • team activity (for example, telephone triage).
• Select a specific area to investigate and improve using tried and tested improvement tools.
• Test changes and monitor improvement.
• Share learning within clusters and further afield.​

By joining the Primary Care Access Programme, primary care teams will gain access to:

• expert improvement coaching throughout​
• collation, synthetisation and presentation of your data in a user-friendly format​
• capture of the learning from your testing cycles and promotion of this on our national platforms, and​
• arrangement and facilitation of all calls and meetings.​​

Teams working on a pharmacotherapy topic in Cohort 4 will receive support to understand their systems and to test improvements that can: 

• enable staff involved in prescribing to work together effectively 
• safely streamline prescribing processes, and 
• enable pharmacotherapy and practice staff to fully utilise their skill sets. 

From October to December 2022, we supported 22 primary care teams to use quality improvement methods to improve an aspect of access across a 7-week period. View the infographic for more details of who we supported during Cohort 1.   

Read about what teams achieved in 7 weeks: 

• Perth City Medical Practice Brief Insights
• Moray Coast Medical Practice Brief Insights

“The programme has been great...our practice has found it very motivating and shows you how much you can do in 7 weeks to improve processes and systems for everyone.” - Participating team 

Joining criteria

Primary care teams interested in joining a cohort are asked to meet three criteria to ensure they have the conditions for change to successfully receive support to improve an aspect of access. They are:

Criteria one: Be a: 

• GP cluster (if all practices can participate)​
• GP practice team​
• multidisciplinary team in primary care, or​
• pharmacotherapy team.

Criteria two: Ability to identify a project team. For a practice team this may be a practice manager, senior administrator and, if available, a GP to participate in the sessions and take forward the sprint within the practice.

Criteria three: Availability to participate as required during the seven week sprint. This will include two fixed date mandatory sessions and a further five flexible weekly coaching sessions. 

This will include two fixed date mandatory sessions and a further five flexible weekly coaching sessions. For Cohorts 4 and 5 dates see table below.   

If you are interested in joining the programme but are concerned you may not meet all the criteria, please get in touch by emailing his.pcpteam@nhs.scot to speak to a member of the team.

Key dates

Participating teams need to ensure they are available to attend the following events and sessions: 

Application process

If you are interested in joining the programme please complete the application form.

Friday 17 March 2023: Applications close for Cohort 4   

w/c 20 March 2023: We will contact you the outcome of you application 

w/c 27 March 2023: Successful teams will return required documentation   

Friday 28 April 2023: Applications close for Cohort 5 

w/c 8 May 2023: We will contact you about the outcome of your application

If you have any questions about the programme or expression of interest process, please email his.pcpteam@nhs.scot to speak to a member of the team.

More information

You can find more information on the Primary Care Access Programme work by visiting:

• 7-week sprint overview: find out more about the primary care access programme’s seven week sprint. This includes details of the structure, format and expected outcomes.
• PCAP Cohort 1 Infographic: find out more about what we delivered in cohort one, including who we helped, what teams worked on and examples of impact.
• Improving Access to General Practice: information on a previous access programme where we worked with GP practices to improve access to primary care. This access programme helped us design the seven week sprint approach.
• GP Access tools: simple and easy to use data collection tools and learning summaries developed in collaboration with general practice teams. We will support teams to use some of these tools during the seven week sprint programme.

If you have any questions relating to the programme or would like to speak to a member of the team, please get in touch by emailing his.pcpteam@nhs.scot.