One Primary Care

One primary care and a single shared vision. It’s where we need to be in the world of integration and collaboration.

When it comes to a primary care vision, we’ve always had a mixture of many or none. Differing to varying degrees, and often competing in various ways, we’ve had the vision of each Practices, NHSE, CCGs, and patients.

That hasn’t changed but the world in which primary care operates has. We now need one vision, shared by practices PCNs, Place based partnerships, ICS, local authority and patients. While it’s a situation that requires a single shared vision it feels like each party is still clinging on to their own vision, if they even have one.

Too often practices don’t have a vision, and even if they did the landscape has changed so much it may no longer be relevant or achievable. It’s probably even rarer for a Primary Care Network to have agreed their vision, and instead their direction is set by requirements and orders from above.

This leaves Place and ICS caught in a trap between pressure from above dictating the new landscape, and pressures from below fighting to hold on to previous, but often outdated, ways of working. For those in charge at Place and ICS it can be difficult to fully understand the position of primary care, and if you can’t do that a shared vision is impossible. That can leave a struggle with NHSE pushing to get transformation implemented through ICS and place teams, PCNs fighting for resources, influence and control, and practices that don’t engage or collaborate within their PCNs.

• If we want to have a better primary care

• If we want transformation and collaboration to succeed If we want to deliver easier to access and safer care

• If we want to have a sustainable future

• If we want to have a better, more enjoyable working life We need to have a single shared vision for primary care.

It won’t be easy to achieve, it will need compromise, open minds, courage, trust and leadership. Best placed to take the lead is likely to be the Place Based Director. They need to engage their PCN Clinical Directors, who need to engage the GP Partners, and the PCN Managers should engage the Practice Managers. All will need to be on board.

The key to survival and a better primary care isn’t stubbornly clinging on to independence, it will be found in collaboration, and working at scale with neighbouring colleagues to achieve a vision you all share.

If you’re a Place Based Director, or simply ready to take the lead on this, we can help develop your PCN or Place primary care away day. We’ll work with you to develop a program to engage all your stakeholders, and facilitate the session to make sure you achieve the goal of One Primary Care.