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Primary and community care after COVID-19 – What next?

From an estates’ perspective, primary and community care has played an essential role in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a parallel comparison to the acute sector, and the transformational benefits to both systems will be measured and realised differently in the near future.

One benefit to primary care which has been easily identified, is the acceleration of use of technology for patient consultation and perhaps a slightly more flexible and nuanced way of service delivery. The question therefore is whether this type of change is transitional and will engender transformation desired by the system in the long term, or there will simply be a reversion to normality (business as usual) as we combat COVID-19 through a continued successful roll out of the vaccination programme.

In principle, key system players are set to determine the future of primary and community care, bearing in mind the long-term plan may need to re-gear its priorities, since it was put in place before any thoughts of COVID-19.

Primary Care Networks (PCNs) as one of these players will engender enhanced collaboration and incentivised expansion of roles/recruitment within integrated systems and services. Integrated care systems (ICSs) being an existing system player, may have helped with the modelling of PCNs without factoring how PCNs will be sustained by an estates solution to support delivery of its core agenda. Perhaps, it is pertinent to note that data is now been made available to make crucial strategic decisions that puts estates on the forefront of the agenda for any clinical planning and services delivery.

Estates are a critical planning factor in the maturity of integrated care systems (ICBs), and the appropriate tools must be in place to assure the system that bright ideas and solutions such as the ICB-owned health and wellbeing centres become front and centre of a reform that reflects a primary and community care of the future.

What this means in its true sense is estates, being an enabler to bring together a variety of options to system players, encompassing a balanced approach to the use of technology for patient access, the use of data to develop strategy and foster system collaboration, and of course an infrastructure fit for purpose, built to environmental standards to negate carbon footfall, and at the same time become a stimulus for recruitment and retention of staff.

None of these ambitions can be achieved unless government goals such as the levelling up agenda is set within the framework of broad financial settlements identified under the comprehensive spending review. This will facilitate long term investment plans in estates, engender data backed solutions and create a flexible environment that adapts easily to change, whilst bringing confidence to a diversity of clinical services that corresponds directly with the health and social care of the population at every point in time.

Jo Fox
Jo Fox

Jo Fox is the senior programme lead for the estates and technology transformation fund.
Jo is also currently the national estates lead for NHS England’s seasonal and pandemic vaccination programme
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Last Updated on 1 September 2022