Ann Neville

Practice Business Manager, Darwen Healthcare

Ann Neville has worked within healthcare settings for the past 12 years having previously worked for 18 years in management roles in non-healthcare settings. Ann says she learned about the quality of care for patients during her employment at East Lancashire Hospice seeing the clear dedication that staff have for their patients and she still maintains strong links with them today.

Ann joined Darwen Healthcare in 2013 as a Customer Service Manager at a time when the practice was really struggling to manage their availability of GP Appointments and vowed that her main purpose of working within General Practice was to actually make a difference. Ann was offered the post of Practice Manager in December 2014 and has spent the past four years working with the practice team on innovative ways of working, up skilling existing staff such as Practice Nurses, Healthcare Assistants and Non-Clinical Staff and extensively worked on new and innovative ways of improving patient quality care. The CQC inspection in August 2016 rated the practice as “Outstanding” and described the practice as a “practice that put the patient first, and used innovation to make sure they were receiving the best and most effective care possible”.

Ann is extremely passionate about education and training and continually looks at ways of reducing the increasing GP workload and has started to create a new model of care within the practice with a middle tier of clinicians such as Advanced Nurse Practitioners, Physician Associate and a Clinical Pharmacist and now looking at how volunteers can also play a part in General Practice. Ann has worked extremely hard to empower the practice to continue to audit practice performance by continually amending action plans to allow improvement. This has seen the practice winning a number of awards including the RCGP Bright Ideas Award 2017 for England, Practice in Management, Practice Manager of the Year Award 2017, MIP List 2017 and has just seen the Nursing Team shortlisted in this year’s Burdett Nursing Awards in Men’s Health.

Away from the practice Ann regularly visits the theatre, travelling overseas and spending time with her two adorable grandchildren Esmae and Isaac.