Since the NHS was created in 1948, the population has grown, and people are living longer. Many people are living with long term conditions such as diabetes, chronic lung disease, asthma and heart disease or suffer with mental health issues and may need to access their local health services more often.
Your GP practices are working together with community, mental health, social care, pharmacy, hospital and voluntary services in their local areas in groups known as Primary Care Networks (PCNs).
Primary care networks build on the core of current primary care services and enable greater provision of proactive, personalised, coordinated and more integrated health and social care. Clinicians describe this as a change from reactively providing appointments to proactively care for the people and communities they serve. Where emerging primary care networks are in place in parts of the country, there are clear benefits for patients and clinicians.
Primary care networks are based on GP registered lists, typically serving natural communities of around 30,000 to 50,000. They are small enough to provide the personal care valued by both patients and GPs, but large enough to have impact and economies of scale through better collaboration between practices and others in the local health and social care system.
For more information: https://www.england.nhs.uk/primary-care/primary-care-networks/
ESTON PRIMARY CARE NETWORK (PCN) was formed in June 2019 and is made up of four individual, well-established practices:
