NHS Dorset clinical commissioning group: leadership award runner-up

Clinical leads from Dorset CCG. The Great Leaders programme has helped family doctors to speak authoritatively about their work and priorities. Photograph: Dorset CCG/Columbia Photography

The Great Leaders programme developed for GPs in Dorset has given them the confidence they need to take on their new role as NHS commissioners, with responsibility for a £900m budget and a 766,000 patient population.

The scheme, which involves 40-50 GPs who have lead roles in the county-wide clinical commissioning group (CCG), has also made family doctors more "media savvy", so that they can speak authoritatively and clearly about the work they are doing and their priorities.

Since the programme was launched in June last year, the GPs involved in it have increased their public profile. They were behind an awareness campaign concerning when the public should use the new 111 out-of-hours telephone advice line and they also launched The Big Ask public consultation exercise seeking patients' views about local services.

GPs also organised two large public meetings to invite comments about the CCG's strategy.

On the commissioning front, the GPs were instrumental in introducing new dementia services following negotiations with their local authority health and wellbeing boards. They have also lad on commissioning services that help avoid emergency hospital admissions, as well as others such as targeting chronic obstructive pulmonary disease services in the over-75s and establishing a community-based pain management service.

The CCG's director of engagement and development, Charles Summers, says the list of achievements illustrates the success of the programme, as the GPs have moved from taking responsibility for the care of their own practice list to having responsibility for a county-wide population.

Having confident GP commissioners has also changed the focus of conversations with providers for the better. "It's now about 'how can your contract support me and my patients?', often in the past those conversations have been financially lead," says Summers.

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