Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to Primary Care

The NHS and Department of Health and Social Care published their delivery plan for recovering access to Primary Care in May 2023. 

The plan sets out how the NHS will make it easier and more convenient for patients to get the help they need from primary care services, with a focus on general practice and pharmacy services.

This plan is nationally led and will build on work already happening locally across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent to improve patient access to services.

It will take time to safely make all of the changes in the national plan. We thank you for your patience and ask you to support us and your local practice and patient participation groups (PPGs) as we continue on this improvement journey. 

Please be assured that your GP practice team is always committed to providing the very best care that it can, within the given resources. General practice continues to work under enormous pressure where demand on their services frequently exceeds the capacity that is available, despite providing record numbers of appointments.

The national delivery plan

Some practices are already operating in line with the national plan. However, it will take time for these processes to be set up and running across all practices in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent. We have already started working with local GP practices and community pharmacies to build up the foundations required to meet the aims of the national delivery plan.

The aims of the plan include:

• For the first time ever, patients who need prescription medication will be able to get it directly from a pharmacy without a GP appointment. This will be for seven common conditions including earache, sore throat, and urinary tract infections. Patients are asked to note this will be a new service and no timescales are in place for when this may start, but it is hoped to be in time for winter 2023.
• People will be able to self-refer for key services, including physiotherapy, hearing tests, and podiatry without seeing their GP first
• Further investment in better telephone technology for GP teams. This will allow practices to manage call queues, including calling patients back rather than patients having to wait on the phone
• Staff at GP practices who are answering calls will have extra training, so that they can prioritise patients who need to see a GP or arrange for people to see other healthcare staff who can help them.

What is already being done?

While we wait for further detail from NHS England on the national plan, in particular around the pharmacy element, we have been working with our primary care providers on an ambitious, well-established programme of work to support and transform our general practice services.

Patients have already started benefiting from some of the changes we’ve been working on, and, although we know there is more to do to deliver on the aims of the national plan, further developments will mean we can better meet patients’ needs now and in the future.

Changes include:

• Increasing the range of healthcare professionals in general practice. This means you will be able to have an appointment with the healthcare professional best able to suit your clinical needs, such as a nurse, paramedic, pharmacist, mental health practitioner, or physiotherapist. You can find out more about the new roles within GP practices further down in this document
• Upgrading GP practice telephone systems to help them to manage multiple calls and reduce the struggle for people to contact their practice. Many practices have already been upgraded, with more to come.
• Developing our primary care workforce plan, which is helping recruitment and retention of staff and will provide more care navigation training to our frontline practice reception teams. This will support patients to be triaged more effectively and ensure patients are seen by the right healthcare professional for their clinical needs
• Providing our GP practices with a comprehensive training and transformation support programme through the General Practice Improvement Programme. This will support practices to understand and implement the improvements that will be necessary to deliver on these ambitious national aims

While we know that access to services remains a concern for many residents, we would also like to acknowledge and thank our GP practice teams that are working hard to deliver safe, timely, and quality care for patients.

In Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent we are delivering 11% more appointments in general practices (2022-23) than before Covid (2019-2020) and we are delivering more appointments face-to-face (73%) than the national average (69%).

We have greatly expanded the range of healthcare professionals working in general practice to reduce waiting times for appointments and ensure patients are seen by the right healthcare professional for their needs. These members of the team are highly qualified professionals, that are experts in their fields. You can read more about these essential members of the general practice team, and how they can benefit you, here. 

We will continue to work closely with local practices and community pharmacies as we work to deliver this national plan and improve patient experience and health outcomes for everyone in Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent.

Keeping involved

A great way to keep up-to-date and contribute to all the work we are doing around general practice services is to join your practice’s PPG. A PPG is a group of people who are registered with a GP practice and have volunteered to work with the practice to represent patients; most GP surgeries now have one. 

The role of PPG members includes providing an important link between the practice and its patients, which enables the practice to receive feedback on patient experience and ultimately to improve the way they do things.  You can contact your GP practice to ask about joining your practice PPG.

In addition to joining your local PPG, you can also get involved with wider aspects of local health and care in other ways. These include:

• Joining the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent People’s Panel
• Joining the Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent People and Communities Assembly

The People’s Panel is an online group of local people who help to inform health and care services in the area. Already, more than 1,100 people from across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent, are part of the panel and are helping to shape services for the better by proving feedback to regular, short surveys. You can find out more about the People’s Panel here.

The People and Communities Assembly is an advisory network, which is helping to shape the ICB’s approach to engaging with people and communities. The Assembly includes representatives from a range of different groups and communities across Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent who are helping us to reach different parts of the community to ensure we’re hearing views from people of all different backgrounds. The Assembly includes representatives from organisations such as Healthwatch, as well as members of the public who can show us how to get into grass roots communities. Members of the public are helpful in helping us by:

• Identifying groups or channels that could be used to get the views of the public
• Advising us on how to adapt our approach for a particular group
• Alerting us to groups or communities that we might not be reaching through existing channels
• Sharing information about best practice, or things to avoid

Find out more about the Assembly here.

You can also give your views by completing the ‘Friends and Family Test’ (FFT) if you are invited to. Your GP practice may also have feedback forms available to complete. You can ask reception staff if you’re not sure where to find these feedback forms. You can read more about the FFT here.