Dr Joanna Bircher Clinical Director, Greater Manchester GP Excellence Programme

About me

Joanna is a GenerationQ Fellow and Clinical Director for the Greater Manchester GP Excellence Programme, a partnership between the GM Health and Social Care Partnership and the Royal College of General Practitioners.

She is also a GP partner at Lockside Medical Centre in Stalybridge, where she has led responsibility for audit and quality improvement. Since 2012, Joanna has been the quality improvement lead for Tameside and Glossop Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG).

Joanna graduated in medicine from Queens' College Cambridge and the University of Manchester in 1993 and joined Lockside Medical Centre after qualifying as a GP in 1998. She completed a postgraduate certificate in education in 2008 and combines her clinical duties with GP training for the North Western Deanery. 

From 2009-12, Joanna was the programme director for the North Western Deanery’s extended GP training pilot. Since April 2014 she has been working with the RCGP, collaborating with the Nationals Diabetes Audit, Cancer Research UK and the Health Foundation to support GP Practices with their improvements.

Joanna has used her fellowship to explore ways to support frontline staff in GP practices to deliver improvements. This experience, and the opportunities she has had within her CCG, has led to the development of the RCGP QI Guide for General Practice.  

She hopes to use this guide as a basis for stimulating more GPs and their teams learn about how improvement methods might improve the care of their patients and their working lives.