SaHF DMBC Volume 1 Edition 1.1.pdf - Shaping a healthier future

8b. Primary care development
8.6. Supporting primary care across NW London
The development of primary care is recognised as a central strand of delivering care out of
hospital and critical to ensuring that patients have both easy access to care and integrated
care when they need it.
GP practices will continue to offer core primary care services, and as GP networks and other
integrated ways of working develop, these local networks will be able to offer additional
expertise and capacity for more appointments. In addition, depending on local needs, some
existing community sites will provide other services locally, serving as a support “hub” to
local integrated teams. The services offered at these hubs will vary depending on local
needs and infrastructure, ranging from bases for multidisciplinary teams working together to
“one-stop” local centres for GP appointments, diagnostics and outpatient appointments.
Finally, all patients will have access to urgent care 24 hours a day, seven days a week at
their local hospital through urgent care centres. In the future, residents in NW London will
experience a coordinated and integrated health and social care service using evidencebased
pathways, case management and personalised care planning.
This will require close management of demand at peak times. Out of hospital care will
enhance its seven-day a week service, with telephone advice and triage, in conjunction with
Urgent Care Centres, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To improve access at
peak times, a wider range of access routes into services will be developed, e.g. face-to-face,
by telephone, by email and by video consultation. Some practices already offer email
consultations, or contact people by text and this will be expanded for those patients who
want this rather than more traditional consultations.
Demand on general practice is already high, and in order to achieve our vision for out of
hospital care practices we will need to work both collaboratively and innovatively. There are
a number of areas in which practices have already started to work in new ways and to inform
further developments NHS NW London has completed a significant research programme,
involving the surveying of over 1,000 patients registered with GPs in the area, to understand
their priorities for the service.
A programme of activity has been agreed between all CCG chairs in NW London which will
enable them to work together to support over 400 practices in the area to realise the
ambition of delivering better care closer to home. This programme will run throughout the
implementation out of hospital strategies to ensure that primary care is prepared for the
activity shift resulting from these strategies.
8.7. Patient priorities
NHS NW London, on behalf of the CCG chairs, has conducted research into the priorities of
patients in the area by surveying over 1,000 patients. The methodology was to initially use
research literature to develop a long list of over 200 aspects of General Practice important to
patients. This list was reduced to 59 items and discussed at two patient workshops with a
total of 100 participants. Participants from the workshops ultimately voted on their most
important items and from this a list of ten priorities was established which was shared more
widely through a street survey of 1,040 patients. This process is summarised in Figure 8.7.
8b. Primary care development 233