What is a Primary Care Network?
A primary care network is a group of practices who work together to focus on local patient care. They’ve been around since 2019 and 99 per cent of practices across England now work as part of one.
With increased demand and a shortage of clinical staff, practices find they can provide greater, more personalised care for patients when they can work together on certain services or issues.
Take a look at this short animation from NHS England which explains how they work.
Meet the Team
The East Cleveland Group Primary Care Network (PCN) team works with local practices to provide and develop efficient and effective services with patients at the centre. The team consists of:
- Pharmacy Team
- East Cleveland PCN employs a pharmacy team made up of clinical pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. Their role involves undertaking medication reviews, medicine optimisation, structured medication reviews and holding clinics for long term conditions such as diabetes, lipids, and frailty.
- Social Prescribers
- The PCN has a team of social prescribers whose role is to support patients’ social needs. This could be helping patients with housing needs, benefits, social isolation, foodbanks and much more. Patients can either be referred by their GP practice or refer themselves to the service.
- Care Coordinators
- The PCN’s care coordinator team support practices with patients living in a care home. They undertake a weekly home round to support with patients’ healthcare needs, carry out dementia reviews and emergency health care plans as well as supporting with the early cancer workstream and coordinating a range of other tasks to support practices.
- Trainee Advanced Clinical Practitioner (ACP)
- The trainee ACP offers appointments for appropriate patients with specific acute on the day illnesses; these appointments are managed directly by the surgery.
- GP Assistant (GPA)
- The GPA’s role is to assist the GP with both admin and basic clinical tasks such as bloods, dressings, ECG’s and immunisations, basic reports, document preparation and summarising patient notes.
- First Contact Physio (FCP)
- The musculoskeletal physio sees patients who have specific musculoskeletal (MSK) issues and appointments can be booked by your GP practice. The FCP can triage and treat patients as well as arranging investigations or appropriate onward referral. Available for anyone aged 18 and over with back/spinal pain (first instance), joint pain (including arthritis), soft tissue injuries and muscle/ligament/bone/tendon issues.
- Mental Health team
- The PCN’s mental health team consists of Mental Health Practitioners and a Mental Health & Wellbeing Practitioner who supports patients with a Serious Mental Impairment. Appointments can be requested by your GP practice.
Further information is available from your practice.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a primary care network (PCN)?
A primary care network consists of groups of general practices working together with a range of local providers, including across primary care, community services, social care and the voluntary sector, to offer more personalised, coordinated health and social care to their local populations.
Networks would normally be based around natural local communities typically serving populations of at least 30,000 and not tending to exceed 50,000. They should be small enough to maintain the traditional strengths of general practice but at the same time large enough to provide resilience and support the development of integrated teams.
Which organisations form part of a primary care network?
Primary care networks will be expected to have a wide-reaching membership, led by groups of general practices. This should include providers from the local system such as community pharmacy, optometrists, dental providers, social care providers, voluntary sector organisations, community services providers or local government.
What are Primary Care Networks designed to do?
Primary care networks will provide proactive, coordinated care to their local populations, in different ways to match different people’s needs, with a strong focus on prevention and personalised care. This means supporting patients to make informed decisions about their own health and care and connecting them to a wide range of statutory and voluntary services to ensure they can access the care they need first time.
Networks will also have a greater focus on population health and addressing health inequalities in their local area, using data and technology to inform the delivery of population scale care models.
As an example, this will be supported by the introduction of a new Tackling Neighbourhood Inequalities Service Specification to be delivered by PCNs signed up to the Network Contract Directed Enhanced Service (DES) from 2021 and 2022.
How many Primary Care Networks currently exist across the country?
As of 30 November 2018, 93.4% of practices across England considered themselves to be part of a network. This is based on Clinical Commissioning Groups responses to the monthly GP Forward View Monitoring Survey.
In light of the more detailed information included in the Long Term Plan and “Investment and evolution: A five year framework for GP contract reform to implement The NHS Long Term Plan” about the role and requirements of PCNs, groups of practices will be reviewing their position.
PCNs will exist formally once they have met registration requirements for the GP contract Network Directed Enhanced Service (DES) and been approved by their commissioner.
The Network DES will start from 1 July 2019. Information is available in the recently published “Investment and evolution: A five year framework for GP contract reform to implement The NHS Long Term Plan”.
What are the core characteristics of a Primary Care Network?
The core characteristics of a Primary Care Network (PCN) are:
- Practices working together and with other local health and care providers, around natural local communities that geographically make sense, to provide coordinated care through integrated teams.
- Typically a defined patient population of at least 30,000 and tend not to exceed 50,000.
- Providing care in different ways to match different people’s needs, including flexible access to advice and support for ‘healthier’ sections of the population, and joined up care for those with complex conditions.
- Focus on prevention and personalised care, supporting patients to make informed decisions about their care and look after their own health, by connecting them with the full range of statutory and voluntary services.
- Use of data and technology to assess population health needs and health inequalities; to inform, design and deliver practice and populations scale care models; support clinical decision making, and monitor performance and variation to inform continuous service improvement.
- Making best use of collective resources across practices and other local health and care providers to allow greater resilience, more sustainable workload and access to a larger range of professional groups.