The King's Fund - Integrating additional roles into primary care networks (4 March 2022)

Summary

The Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) was introduced in England in 2019 as a key part of the government’s manifesto commitment to improve access to general practice. The aim of the scheme is to support the recruitment of 26,000 additional staff into general practice.

This is a huge ambition and requires significant and complex change across general practice. While primary care networks (PCNs) have swiftly recruited to these roles, they are not being implemented and integrated into primary care teams in an effective way. 

This research by The King's Fund focused on four roles to examine the issues related to their implementation:

• social prescribing link workers
• first contact physiotherapists
• paramedics
• pharmacists.

The research examined the experiences of people working in these roles, and of the people managing them. It found a lack of shared understanding about the purpose or potential contribution of the roles, combined with ambiguity about what multidisciplinary working would mean for GPs. If the scheme is to be successfully implemented, it will require extensive cultural, organisational and leadership development skills that are not easily accessible to PCNs.