Primary Care Clinical Strategies

Attain was commissioned to support the development of primary care clinical strategies as part of the Primary Care Network Estates Toolkit Programme. The requirement was to lead PCN Clinical Directors, Locality Clinical Leads and Business Managers through the clinical strategy development process, and (through this developmental approach) use these clinical plans to inform their future primary care estates requirements. The estates strategies were developed by our partners in these programmes, gbpartnerships consult. This work was delivered with all General Practices, either via their local Primary Care Networks (PCNs) or their Place configuration (Localities). Attain has supported the Birmingham and Solihull ICS, Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICS, and Frimley ICS with this work.

What we did

Our approach was to:

1. Develop population health profiles for each locality, using the Shape Atlas tool.
2. Facilitate sessions consisting of multiple Primary Care Localities to go through the national toolkit and discuss each clinical input/output level as needed.
3. Host individual 1-2-1 meetings with PCNs to develop an understanding of local constraints and issues, as well as providing PCNs an opportunity to elucidate their understanding of their systems.
4. Undertake ongoing developmental support to PCNs to address insufficient understanding of critical issues and the actions needed to address them in the Clinical Plan that could then inform a detailed estates strategy for that PCN/Locality.

Outcomes

Our team engaged with PCNs and Localities representing almost 380 General Practices. We developed and had approval for over 60 clinical strategies for the PCNs and Localities.

Each strategy was the result of challenging the local ambition, exploring existing clinical models, and defining future opportunities. This included establishing the supporting infrastructure, such as digital, workforce, and wider stakeholders, to agree how general practice will deliver clinical services for the population. These clinical strategies informed the estate requirements for each Practice, as well as the future plans for each ICS.