General Practice is a precarious place and losing the most valuable people in your practice could be catastrophic. If you don’t know who they are, you’re sleepwalking right into it, yet few practices have plans for Key Person Risk.
A Practice can have more than one person with unique, invaluable skills and knowledge. It might be a GP Trainer, specialist nurse, PM, or the person doing the rotas. The impact of their departure can sink a practice, recovery can be damaging and time consuming.
If we rely heavily on a person, it makes sense to have plans in place to protect the practice.
Identify your key person(s).
Find out who are they and what are the crucial skills and knowledge. It’s not always the obvious people so ask others for their view.
Create Key Teams.
Make sure skills and knowledge are shared across the practice. You need to create key teams not a key person.
Succession plan.
Ensure staff are developed and/or recruited, covering the key roles not just the senior positions.
Build risk ready systems.
Create guides, handbooks, processes and procedures that cover the key roles in sufficient detail that another person could take over if needed.
Key Person Risk is one of the biggest risks for practices, it’s best to be protected.