The changing face of General Practice
General Practice continues to change at pace with digitisation and transformation of GP service delivery all accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. At practice level, primary care has altered dramatically in the past year, with staff both clinical and administrative, adapting to new ways of working. This has heightened the skills requirements, for GPs, clinicians and for all members of the non-clinical teams. The continued transition to the PCN model presents its own challenges around changing business models, funding challenges, an increasing governance burden, all coupled with a now digital population with changing expectations.
These pressures are driving the fundamental transformation in general practice services with our focus now firmly on general practice services that will be able to work at scale within the framework of the PCNs and Integrated Care Services. We are witnessing the development and expansion of the healthcare workforce and improved practice environments – clinical pharmacists, link workers, physiotherapists, dieticians, mental health practitioners, paramedics amongst others are all part of the new PCN frameworks. Improving our ability to signpost patients to the most appropriate service or where more appropriate supporting them to self-care.
General practice working as part of a more joined-up primary care workforce that will be able to devote the greatest amount of time to quality and health improvement for patients and local communities. What matters now is getting on and delivering it so that practices can start to make a difference and patients can start to feel the difference. The pandemic has enabled many PCNs to come into their own in the crisis, collaborating well and sharing the workforce and developing their thinking around localised decision making.
Conference 2022 will enable you to discuss and explore how to meet these new challenges. We hope you have a good day, with some excellent and thought-provoking speakers and some excellent workstreams plus the opportunity to network with the exhibitors and of course, with fellow delegates for 2022 we have also added a number of elements that will enable you to invest some time in your own wellbeing and resilience.