Primary Care Resilience

A Primary Care Resilience Guide has been developed for ICBSs across the South East to find, and access key guidance documents, helpful tips, information on NHS programmes and local area initiatives.

Alongside the Primary Care Resilience Guide, we recommend you register on the Future NHS collaboration platform, which shares up to date advice, guidance, best practice and offers an opportunity to share challenges with colleagues on the forum.

Digital First Primary Care

The Digital First programme continues to support GP practices and Primary Care Networks (PCNs) to move towards providing Digital First services by co-ordinating and designing a digital ‘front door’ to NHS services which integrates different clinical organisations and their IT solutions to support the adoption of new technologies by clinicians and patients.

Digital First is a technology enabled change programme, initiated as a requirement from the Long Term Plan (LTP) in January 2019, stipulating that “By 2023/24 every patient in England will be able to access a digital first primary care offer”. Since the inception of the programme, significant progress has been made to define the concept and delivery methodology for digital first. From the outset, this programme has been transformation focused and has utilised data insights and qualitative feedback from the system to make informed decisions around future patient pathways and digital deployments aligned with the NHS GP Contract, Long Term Plan, PCN Network Contract Directed Enhanced Service and Planning Guidance.

Caring for patients digitally has become a reality due to COVID-19 and the addition of online triage systems. Closer integration of clinical systems across the NHS will significantly improve access to primary care services by enabling people to quickly get the most appropriate advice, information, support or care for their needs from the right service or professional. Patients will increasingly receive care within their own home or in the community, rather than hospital, as better tools, and innovations such as home monitoring devices and video consultation are able to communicate with practice systems. This will give the treating professional the tools they need to deliver targeted, precise and more personalised interventions.

Digital First Primary Care Support and Resource Guide

A range of guidance material has been updated to continue to support the primary care workforce with this transition. In order to support practice staff in being able to easily access this information, the South East Region Digital First programme has updated the South East Support and Resource Guide  to support practices in optimising the use of digital technology by continuing to provide one platform to find and access key national resources across NHS programmes.

• Version 2 of the guide updates includes a new resource guide produced with a local area GP to assist practices dealing with Online Consultation demand, tips on delivering online services to support practices to increase utilisation of repeat prescription, access to records and online appointment booking, the newly improved NHS Service Finder and an updated digital practice readiness checklist to support practice staff in optimising the use of digital tools and new ways of working.

Download the Online Consultation Demand Guide and Digital First GP practice readiness checklist to support practice staff in delivering digital services.

For any questions, please contact the South East Region Primary Care team at england.seprimarycaretransformationteam@nhs.net