Welcome to the April edition of PCC Insight. One of the main challenges for the health service is ensuring the sustainability of primary care. Problems people experience in accessing GPs and dentists are in the news on a regular basis. Closure of community pharmacies are now starting to reach the headlines as well. This makes for a challenging time for commissioners of primary care services, integrated care boards (ICBs). With little direction from the centre and minimal investment, it’s crucial that ICBs work through what they need to do at a local level to ensure primary care services remain viable and accessible to patients.
With changes to procurement rules, including the introduction of the Provider Selection Regime (PSR), there may be more opportunity for ICBs to shape the future provision for GP and dental services. Our recent PSR workshops have been oversubscribed, and reruns are now booking fast. It is really important that ICBs have considered what they would like future provision to look like and ensure they work with providers in all areas of primary care to understand the sustainability challenges, and the potential opportunities, that they may wish to consider and include in their primary care strategies. Co-production with primary care professionals, and flexibility within the primary care strategy, to reflect the differences across different places in the ICB is crucial. PCC has brought primary care professionals together with ICB leaders to facilitate discussions around future provision and opportunities to develop a more sustainable service.
In this edition of PCC Insight we consider the landscape for working at scale and factors that commissioners and providers may wish to consider. We get to the heart of the challenge for primary medical care looking at practice finance, which is another area where our support is becoming increasingly in demand. We consider some of the skills needed to commission services with tips from our personal and team development trainer.
PCC is supporting most ICBs as well as many practices and PCNs now. Our practice support programme is gaining traction with its ability to work with practices in a personalised way, in the time, and within the budgets available. We are focusing on the areas of premises, finance, access and workforce. Our leadership offer, which includes our flagship programme the Confident leader has been further enhanced with the addition of the Building confident leading women programme which we have included on the national event offer for the first time. What we are hearing from our clients is that our support is valued, not just the technical aspects of primary care, but how to apply it with the knowledge and skills to effectively commission and lead teams. Visit www.pcc-cic.org.uk to find out more.
Last Updated on 2 April 2024
