WIREDGOV

The decision by almost all GP practices in England to sign up to the new Primary Care Network (PCN) contract for the next year has been welcomed by the NHS Confederation’s PCN Network.

Ruth Rankine, director of the NHS Confederation’s PCN Network, said:

“This is great news for primary care and for patients. PCNs are absolutely key to delivering the ambitions of the NHS Long Term Plan, ensuring that patients, irrespective of where they live, get access to the same services whilst giving PCNs the flexibility to respond to the needs of their local population.”

The 98 per cent of GP practices in England that have signed up will receive a share of half a billion pounds a year of extra investment to employ more staff and deliver more services in or near to people’s homes – a total investment of £1.4 billion by 2023/24 to help deliver an extra 26,000 workforce roles.

Primary care has been at the forefront of the NHS response to the coronavirus pandemic and has accelerated the transformation of services first set out in the NHS Long Term Plan last year.

For example by providing resilience where staff have been absent, provide remote consultations, enabling collaborative arrangements for coronavirus assessment hubs, and enabling a cross GP, pharmacy and community services multi-disciplinary team approach to supporting care homes.