On Improving Chronic Disease Management in Primary Care

Dr Richard Baxter trained and then worked as a GP partner (for over 20 years), clinical leader and GP appraiser in London before moving to Barry in 2021. He now combines working locally as a salaried GP with working in quality improvement and GMS sustainability for Cardiff and Vale University Health Board. He understands well how challenging, but also vital, continuous improvement is amidst the intense pressure of general practice. Living with his wife and family on Nells Point and building connections with the ‘island’ community maintains a healthy work life balance.

We’ve worked with Richard on our project for the All Wales Therapeutics and Toxicology Centre (AWTTC), as well as having insightful conversations with him in our work on GMS sustainability.

Dr Baxter has recently published two articles on the Medscape UK website on the topic of Chronic Disease Management(CDM), which accounts for a huge proportion of health and social care expenditure and GP time. The first article, Optimise Chronic Disease Recall in General Practice, outlines the need for Chronic Disease Recall, using a patient-centred model, as well as the various approaches to implementing this within a practice, including the pros and cons of each.

The second article, Improving Chronic Disease Management in Primary Care: Case Studies, looks at case studies throughout the UK. Many of these have proven effective in managing recall using efficient methods, such as birth-month alignment for structured recall, as well as multidisciplinary team approaches to make the best use of non-GP members of the clinical team. Dr Baxter goes on to explain the development of a framework within Cardiff and Vale UHB to identify potential areas for improvement within CDM at the practice level.

If you’d like to have further discussion with Dr Baxter on this topic, please contact him via email: richard.baxter2@wales.nhs.uk

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