Primary Care Networks North Yorkshire

Across North Yorkshire, GP practices have been coming together to form networks, typically covering 30,000-50,000 patients, to provide the structure and funding for services to be developed locally, responding to the needs of their patients.

NHS England has big ambitions for primary care networks, with the expectation that they will help to deliver many of the commitments in the long-term plan and offer a wider range of services to patients. 

They will have teams made up of a range of staff such as GPs, clinical pharmacists, district nurses, community geriatricians, dementia workers and Allied Health Professionals such as physiotherapists and podiatrists/chiropodists, joined by social care and the voluntary sector.

They will be expected to provide a wider range of primary care services to patients, involving a broader set of staff roles than would be feasible in individual practices – such as first-contact physiotherapy, extended access and social prescribing. Networks received specific funding for clinical pharmacists and social prescribing link workers in 2019/20, with funding for physiotherapists, physician associates and paramedics to follow. 

In some areas, GP practices had been working together for a while, but the NHS long-term plan and the new five-year framework for the GP contract, published in January 2019, put in place a more formal structure around this way of working, without creating new statutory bodies.

Primary care networks will be required to deliver a set of seven national service specifications:

• structured medication reviews,
• enhanced health in care homes,
• anticipatory care (with community services),
• personalised care
• supporting early cancer diagnosis
• cardiovascular disease case-finding
• locally agreed action to tackle inequalities

They will also be the footprint around which integrated community-based teams will develop, and community and mental health services will be expected to configure their services around PCN boundaries. These teams will provide services to people with more complex needs, providing proactive and anticipatory care.