The can-do NHS leader transforming care in her community

Ask Dr Jess Harvey CMgr MCMI for the secret to good leadership and she’ll tell you it’s about ensuring you bring people with you – whether that’s team members or the local community. 

Jess is a local GP, clinical director for the South East Shropshire Primary Care Network (PCN) and co-chair of the GP Board in Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin. She also won the Leadership Award, sponsored by CMI, at this year’s inaugural NHS Excellence Awards. 

It was a deserved win. Just look at how Jess approached the task of improving care access and quality in Highley, an area of South Shropshire she describes as being “left behind”. The existing practice there was based in a cramped bungalow, situated at the top of inaccessible steps. At 2am one morning, Jess found herself firing off an email to a colleague with an idea: if they could find new premises, they could expand the provision. 

They soon hatched a plan to move into the local leisure centre and create an integrated community hub, with space for expanded support that included physiotherapy, dietetics, mental health and health coaching.  

“What do you need?”

The community was sceptical. They’d been let down by establishment figures enough already. Jess’s answer was to make them an integral part of the process. 

“We asked what they’d want from a new medical centre and used that to guide us,” she recalls. “They said they wanted parking; the leisure centre has a massive car park, so they’re never going to struggle to park. They wanted phlebotomy; we have a big treatment room with a special phlebotomy chair. They wanted better access; appointments are up by 81%. When people see what they want put into action, you start to get buy-in.”

Jess managed to unite residents, councils, clinicians, charities, library services, the Integrated Care Board and Shropshire Council to secure funding and deliver a model shaped by those local voices. The resulting one-stop centre didn’t just improve access to care and related services; it also improved footfall at the leisure centre, potentially improving people’s preventative habits and helping to make that facility, itself an invaluable community resource, financially viable.