In this episode of Embedded Conversations, Scott McKenzie is joined by Laura Norton, Chief Operating Officer of North West Leicestershire GP Federation, which supports more than 112,000 patients across 12 GP practices. With more than 20 years’ experience across both provider organisations and commissioning, Laura brings a highly practical perspective on primary care collaboration, service transformation, workforce redesign and neighbourhood working. Under Laura’s operational leadership, the federation has developed a range of innovative services, including a Women’s Health hub that reduced secondary care referrals by more than 35%. In this conversation, Laura explains what it really takes to bring independent GP practices together, why trust must be earned over time and how successful federations demonstrate their value to both practices and patients. The discussion explores why some federations thrive while others struggle, the importance of maintaining engagement across member practices and why culture and leadership often have a greater impact than organisational structure alone. Scott and Laura also examine the challenge of creating successful services without sustainable funding. Using the Women’s Health hub as a real-world example, they discuss what happens when a service delivers strong results but its funding ends. For pharma, medtech and medical device companies, there is a particularly useful discussion about what makes a provider organisation engage with a new opportunity. This is an honest conversation for anyone working in primary care, neighbourhood health, pharma, medtech or NHS transformation who wants to understand how provider organisations build trust, deliver at scale and create lasting change. Laura will also be joining Scott as a speaker at The Embedded Seminar: Making NHS Pathways Work on September 30. Taking place at the Royal College of General Practitioners, the full-day seminar will bring NHS and industry leaders together for an open, practical examination of how decisions are really made and why apparently strong innovations still struggle to become part of NHS pathways. At the seminar, Laura will take the conversation further by sharing what genuinely sits within the control of PCNs and GP federations, how local capacity influences which opportunities progress and why an approach that works in one area may fail in another. The day is designed for senior pharma, medtech and medical device professionals who want to understand the workload, risk, governance and operational realities shaping NHS adoption. Find out more about The Embedded Seminar and book your place here. 👆 Subscribe for future episodes of Embedded Conversations, exploring how change really embeds inside the NHS. Sign up here for Scott’s fortnightly bulletin for the latest insights on selling better to the NHS.
