NHS England: Delivery plan for recovering access to primary care (9 May 2023)

Summary

Primary care, like many parts of the NHS and health systems globally, is under tremendous pressure – one in five people report they did not get through or get a reply when they last attempted to contact their practice. The Fuller Stocktake built a broad consensus on the vision for integrating primary care with three essential elements: streamlining access to care and advice; providing more proactive, personalised care from a multidisciplinary team of professionals; and helping people stay well for longer. 

The joint NHS and Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) plan is an important first step in delivering the vision set out in Dr Claire Fuller’s Next steps for integrating primary care.

Content

This plan from NHS England has two central ambitions:

1. To tackle the 8am rush and reduce the number of people struggling to contact their practice. Patients should no longer be asked to call back another day to book an appointment, and we will invest in general practice to enable this.

2. For patients to know on the day they contact their practice how their request will be managed.

a. If their need is clinically urgent it should be assessed on the same day by a telephone or face-to-face appointment. If the patient contacts their practice in the afternoon they may be assessed on the next day, where clinically appropriate.

b. If their need is not urgent, but it requires a telephone or face-to-face appointment, this should be scheduled within two weeks.

c. Where appropriate, patients will be signposted to self-care or other local services (eg community pharmacy or self-referral services).