Clinical commissioning groups in the UK: a knowledge management study.

Abstract

This paper investigates whether Knowledge Management (KM) tools and techniques would be useful to General Practitioners within the new UK Commissioning Consortia when they adopt the role of General Practitioners commissioners from the current Primary Care Trusts. Empirical data based on questionnaires were sent to a small sample group made up of General Practitioners, Primary Care Staff and Academics in addition to data collected from a set of one to one interviews with some of the sample group. The authors’ findings show that stakeholders (n=30) are not accustomed to using KM as a way to maximize existing knowledge of commissioning of services within the Primary Care Trust but it does show that they are not too far away from possibly realizing that some type of KM strategy would probably work for them. General Practitioners are already using some of the knowledge management tools under different guises. A lot of resources will be saved if General Practitioners can capture as much of the knowledge already available within the Primary Care Trust by incorporating KM tools and techniques.