Join the Primary Care Access Programme
Applications are now open for the next cohort of the Primary Care Access Programme (PCAP). If you would like to apply for this cohort then please complete an application form. Please note that this date is provisional and may be subject to change
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.
From October 2022 to June 2023, we have supported 89 primary care teams to use quality improvement methods to improve an aspect of access across a 7-week period.
Read about what teams achieved in 7 weeks:
- Brief Insights: Increasing access to routine appointments
- Brief Insights: Creating a minor illness clinic to reduce the daily triage list
- Brief Insights: Reducing acute prescription demand with permissible repeats
View the Learning from teams page for more details of who we supported, what they worked on and examples of impact.
“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, or
- multidisciplinary team in primary care.
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.
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
Dates for the next cohort are still provisional and will be updated here once confirmed.
Application process
The next cohort will provisionally begin w/c 12 February 2024, date to be confirmed. If would like to apply, please complete an application form.
Wednesday 10 January 2023: Applications close.
w/c 16 January 2024: We will contact you about the outcome of your application
If you have any questions about the programme or application 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 - Learning from teams: find out more about what we delivered in Cohorts 1-3, 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.