BP Newspaper Issue 8 v5 1-31 (lores) Aug. 2015 | Page 15

About The National Association of Provider Organisations
NAPO has been established by the National Association of Primary Care (NAPC). NAPO is a membership
organisation and network for NHS Primary Care provider companies (federations) and others focused on
the ‘out of hospital’ sector.
Purpose
● To create a strong network and hard wiring
for established and developing PC
organisations aiming to provide care
services within the NHS.
● Support the development of new provider
federations.
● Establish a learning set – to share ideas and
experience, spread best practice and
commercial success factors.

● Create a forum for thought leadership,
healthcare strategy debate and a strong
collective voice with the aim to influence
policy development within the Department
of Health, the Prime Minister’s Office and
NHS England.
● Produce guidance for PC provider
organisations and their commissioners.

Dr Phil Yates,
Chairman
NAPO

● Enable a strengthening of the offer that
these organisations provide to the NHS
and to enhance their ability to perform a
role in transforming care delivery and the
integration of services throughout the NHS.
● Influence NHS commissioners to
acknowledge the potential of federated PC
providers and recognize the important role
that these organisations serve now and in
the future.

Ten top tips for federating

1

Make sure you’ve got sufficient critical mass
to form an entity that will be considered by commissioners to be resilient and robust enough
to be trusted with delivery of services. Small won’t cut it these days and is unlikely to succeed.
Before you even start, consider whether there’s another organisation around that could
achieve what you want to without setting up double-running costs of another corporate entity.
Is there a GP OOH provider, a PMCF entity or other provider that you should be speaking to?

What is the purpose of setting this up?
If you’re unsure of your core functions then don’t do it! There might be several reasons
from mutual support to developing shared back-office functions to bidding for community
services to a vehicle for integrating and merging practices – some or all of the above. Do
you want to be ‘for-profit’ or ‘not-for-profit’. Do you only want to offer services to the NHS
or would you consider private services too? These are challenging issues. You need buy in
from the group to your Mission, Vision and Values – these words aren’t just management
speak – they will control what you do and how you go about it.

3

You can’t short-circuit the
discussions that need to occur at
this set-up stage.
Time spent on considering the delegated
authority of the Board, accountability and the
nuts and bolts of communication, decisionmaking and governance which are encapsulated
within your Constitution and Articles of
Association will avoid a lot of grief later on.

You will need quite a bit of working capital.

2
4

Your management team needs to be strong, commercially savvy, and capable of delivering
your objectives. Every bid process is resource-draining with capital expenditure before a
service goes live and a lag period before commissioners or others pay for what you’ve
provided. I’d suggest not less than £1/patient contribution to form a fund to get going – but
before you dip into your own pockets in these days when there’s general agreement that the
current model of ge