PrimaryPoint is a website, designed to provide primary care organisations with fast and easy 24/7 access to the latest policies, procedures, toolkits, and other services. Developed exclusively for primary care, the online portal helps our customers be compliant with current legislation and best practice. The site has templates, ready to be personalised with the customer’s information and logo, helping to cut down on day-to-day administration. Currently, services accessed through the site include information governance (IG), human resources (HR) and finance.

A bit of history…

Our very successful IG portal was already serving more than 600 GPs, providing them with essential documents and guidance. This made us think whether other services across the NHS Midlands and Lancashire (NHS ML) could be provided in a similar way.

Our in-house app development team, the Digital Improvement Unit (DIU), was drafted in to build a site that would extend the IG service and offer other services to primary care. There is a useful homepage which explains what the portal is and shows all the services NHS ML offers to primary care. The IG portal was migrated across to PrimaryPoint, and our HR and finance departments got to work producing a library of policies, procedures, and standard letters.

In October 2020, we successfully launched PrimaryPoint. Since then, the IG service has gone from strength to strength, with now more than 900 GPs accessing the portal. The IG service on PrimaryPoint is comprehensive, covering contracts and agreements, IG policies and processes, DSP Toolkit guidance and help (for the annual return GPs must send to NHSE), as well as policies and templates and a monthly newsletter. In addition to the online service, our IG experts can also train GP staff and answer any questions primary care organisations have in relation to IG.

Our services

HR is well suited to an online service too, offering tailored policies, procedures and standard letters. Based on best practice, the HR section of Primary Point provides support with absence management, annual leave, flexible working, disciplinary procedures, grievances and performance management, among others. The online service can be used independently, or it can be supported with additional HR advice, guidance, and training.

Our finance service on PrimaryPoint is at its best when used together with additional finance expertise supporting GPs and PCNs to manage their accounts. The online service includes help with financial governance documents, an accountable officer template, a standard finance report template, as well as a guide to coding transactions. There is also a comprehensive guide to the Xero accounting package (which NHS ML uses with its primary care customers), although other systems can be used.

In early 2021, we will be adding business continuity services to PrimaryPoint, with more areas to follow later this year, such as procurement, communications, and medicines optimisation.

What our customers say

I have found the resources available from NHS ML most useful in completing the IG annual return.  It was useful to have documents populated with our information which we have been able download and save for staff to access.  Once set up, the portal easy to use and self-explanatory with correlating GDPR reference numbers.

Katrina Dipple, Business Manager at Darwin Medical Practice

I have accessed the IG section of the portal frequently since its launch in January 2020. The quality and detail of the policies available appear to be of a high standard and where possible we are using these to replace our current policies/processes. We are also grateful to NHS ML for taking requests for policies that we feel would be a useful addition to the portal, such as a National Data Opt Out Policy.

Stephen Fitchett, Practice Manager (IM&T), Leicester