Author: Joe Admin

The background
To start at the beginning, each GP can specify how far they are willing to travel to work from their postcode (setting their work radius) within their account.

This creates a list of Practices that the GP can see, the GP can then select/deselect practices individually to create their own list of Practices that can see their availability.

When a practice logs in, they see a calendar of combined GP sessional availability, made from all the GP’s that have allowed that practice to ‘see’ them. They can browse this calendar and click to see each GP’s details. They can chose to contact GP’s directly.

The Request process
If a practice wants to search for a GP to meet their sessional requirements, they can use a special tool in their account to do so.

Create Requirements
Any practice can create as many sessional Requirements as they like in their Calendar by clicking a session and inputting some details about the requirement. Then they can search quickly through the availability of all the GP’s that they can see, for any that show session availability that matches their requirements.

Requests GP’s
In the results of this search they a can select as many GP’s as they like and click once to send Requests to all of them. This creates a Request in both the GP and Practice calendar and sends the GP an email notification of this.

Managing Responses
Both GP and Practice accounts have features that allow users to manage the Request / Response process until it reaches a satisfactory conculsion.

The GP can then login and read/respond to requests, accepting or declining reach one. This action alters the status of the Request in both parties calendars and sends email notifications to both.

If a GP has accepted a Request, a practice can then Confirm or Decline that acceptance, choosing between any GP’s that have accepted it. An appropriate email notification is sent to the GP.

Confirmed Bookings

GP’s cannot cancel Confirmed bookings (green) – only a Practice can cancel a Confirmed booking

GP’s can cancel any booking before it reaches the Confirmed stage

If a GP has a Confirmed booking with a Practice, then cancels it (by speaking to them) – the GP should ask the Practice to cancel the booking in their account, to avoid future confusion and to allow the GP to re-publish availability for that session should they want to

Some facts about GPnetworks:

• GPnetworks has the most advanced online locum availability system in the UK
• Our system intelligently matches locations
• We’re PCT funded in many areas
• We’re 100% free
• All data is kept private (you choose who can see you)
• We have over 400 Practices and Health Centres looking for locums around the UK
• Practices are also advertising salaried positions to our GP members
• We are not a locum agency

GPnetworks is a small, private company, that supplies a free web-based service to locum GP’s, Practices and Health Centres in the UK.

The service offers an intelligent, localised availability system that matches GP’s and Practices together in a way that saves both parties time and money.

It is intended as a free, quick & simple alternative to using a locum agency for Practices and Locum GP’s

For GP’s:

• You can manage your sessional availability in your Calendar
• You can keep private notes for any day in your Calendar (notes can downloaded as a excel file)
  
• You control your location in your Profile tab
• You specify how far you are willing to travel to work in your Surgeries tab
• You control which surgeries can see your sessional availability in your Surgeries tab
• You will receive email notifications when Surgeries Request you via the system
• You can search the most important Clinical database in one click in your Clinical data tab
• You can save Clinical data searches into your own history, add notes and download history as a pdf

For Practices and Health Centres:

You can use the system to find up-to-date GP sessional availability, then contact the GP’s yourself or make Request to GP’s via the system

If you use the system to contact the Dr’s – then the GPetworks system becomes a much more useful tool.

• It handles the communication with notifications to both parties and reminders where a party has failed to respond
• It creates both a sessional schedule and work history in your Calendar
• It allows you to make multiple Requests to multiple GP’s in 2 clicks and sit back to await their responses (via the system)
• When a Request progresses to a Booking, the system adjusts the GP’s availability to reflect the change – this keeps the system data up-to-date and better focused for everyone else