Edinburgh Napier University

  Over recent years, the Scottish Government (SG) has progressed a raft of major new policy developments that aim to transform health and social care, with primary care being at the heart of
these changes. In 2015, SG established a Primary Care Development Fund (https://news.gov.scot/news/primary-care-investment), which included £30 million to test new models of care through a Primary Care Transformation Fund (PCTF) and the Primary Care Fund for
Mental Health (PCFMH). ‘Tests of change’ began in every territorial health Board in April 2016, funded until March 2018. The Scottish School of Primary Care (SSPC) – a multidisciplinary consortium of Scottish universities with expertise in academic primary care (www.sspc.ac.uk) - was commissioned by SG to evaluate the progress of these tests of change funded by the PCTF and PCFMH, plus any other innovative primary care projects identified that had the potential to be transformative.
The evaluation involved a two-phase approach, the first exploring the planning and expected impacts of the tests of change, and the second exploring actual or perceived impacts, learning, spread and sustainability. This included any unintended negative consequences. The key sources of data were (a) interviews with key informants and (b) national and local documents.
In phase one, we interviewed 155 key informants, and reviewed 661 national and local documents. In phase two, we interviewed a further 191 key informants and reviewed additional documentation relevant to the selected deep dives. Full details of the approach and methods
employed are given in the main report (www.sspc.ac.uk/reports/). We also conducted international literature reviews on primary care transformation, and ANP and MSK Physiotherapy implementation, and reviewed the findings of recent UK reports on new models
of primary care which are available here (www.sspc.ac.uk/reports/). A quantitative evaluation using routine NHS data was planned as part of the current evaluation, but due to considerable delays in accessing the data, is now being taken forward as a separate study by the University of Edinburgh, which will report in Spring 2020.