 X-Genics, provider of GP-focused compliance systems, has expanded its reach with a solution for newly forming consortia. Working closely with consortia at an advanced stage of setup, the company believes its one-stop system will solve several potential concerns about how to standardise dozens of GP practices coming together, while meeting Care Quality Commission (CQC) requirements and achieving real time reporting and monitoring.
 As practice managers prepare to register with the CQC and start organising themselves into GP consortia, a strong underlying quality assurance system is more important than ever. eManager provides a route to easy compliance for practices struggling to keep up with these developments.
eManager introduces a disciplined way of safely delegating tasks to lower-level staff automatically. “Most practices find teaching and monitoring staff takes up too much time,” said Bharat Patel, CEO of X-Genics. “Our expert system ensures staff get it right first time, every time, freeing up valuable practice manager time.”
 The new CQC regime has mooted “real-time monitoring” with unannounced spot checks, which many practices would fail if tested. This will make it even harder for practices not keeping up with routine quality assurance. Most practice managers know they need a solution that keeps them compliant at all times, but are often unsure what to do.
 With the introduction of a new central monitoring capability for eManager, each practice in any consortium will be able to remotely manage every aspect of compliance and safety. Real-time monitoring will generate instant reports of progress and developments throughout the consortium, creating a new gold standard, with a 360-degree learning and management model. Not only can practices become instantly CQC-compliant, two years ahead of time, with minimum effort, but X-Genics also aims to raise practices to a new level of quality assurance, beyond the minimum standards demanded by law.
 In the past, large numbers of managers were employed to recycle information, provide training and police performance. Their role was largely to set targets rather than roll up their sleeves and help practices at ground level.
 In a totally different approach, where practice managers are in trouble or short-staffed, X-Genics will send staff to guide them and put the system in place in order to maintain workflow, as a partner organisation. Managers can also „outsource‟ routine tasks that take up so much of their time, such as health and safety, HR, basic compliance and even book-keeping and accounts.
The company is offering consortia the entire package as an overall service to all its members in a single contract, so consortia need not replicate the inefficiencies of the PCTs. Instead they can hand over the entire process of keeping members up to date, training and monitoring, to a friendly organisation that will identify weaknesses and actively fix them as they occur.
 “By engaging us early on, consortia bring a new discipline and quality control to their members, enabling them to concentrate on commissioning,” said Shabana Dehlavi of X-Genics. “What the new consortia need are new ways of working, efficiencies and technology that will break away from the old, inefficient work practices and structures. eManager provides an injection of practical commercial expertise to help GPs manage multi-site operations, something few GPs will have done before.”
Currently the financial cost of all quality assurance and monitoring is shared between the PCT as monitors and practices as performers, with much duplication of cost and effort. In contrast, X-Genics presents a single, comprehensive service, eliminating duplication, and delivering a core quality assurance service from the consortia budget.
