Primary Care Network (PCN)

Non-urgent advice: Who are we?

Park & Orchard Primary Care Network (PCN) is a collaboration between Park Surgery and Orchard Surgery.

Following the publication of the new GP contract and as part of the NHS Long Term Plan from the 1st July 2019, all GP practices in England should be covered by a primary care network or ‘PCN’.

PCN’s are made up from groups of neighbouring general practices, who through funding are able to employ staff to deliver services across the member practices.

Park & Orchard PCN are a growing team of clinical and non-clinical staff, who are dedicated to improving healthcare access and increasing the services we can offer our patients.

These services range from vaccination programmes, Extended access, medication reviews with our Pharmacy team and tackling local inequalities through Community engagement on projects such as the Women’s Health & Menopause Café.

The idea being that PCNs help join services at a local level, focusing on the specific needs of the local population to improve the range and effectiveness of primary care services available.

Non-urgent advice: Services

Health & Wellbeing

Health and wellbeing coaches support people to increase their ability to self-manage, motivation levels and commitment to change their lifestyle. They are experts in behaviour change and focus on improving health related outcomes by working with people to set personalised goals and change their behaviours. They work with people with physical and/or mental health conditions and those at risk of developing them.

Health and wellbeing coaches can be an effective intervention for people experiencing a range of long term conditions, including respiratory, cardiovascular (including type 2 diabetes and hypertension), and stress/low mood. They can also support people with weight management, diet and increasing activity levels.

Social Prescribing

Social prescribing link workers give people time and focus on what matters to the person as identified in their care and support plan. They connect people to community groups and agencies for practical and emotional support and offer a holistic approach to health and wellbeing, hence the name ‘social prescribing’.

Social prescribing enables patients referred by general practice, pharmacies, multi-disciplinary teams, hospital discharge teams, allied health professionals, fire service, police, job centres, social care services, housing associations and voluntary, community and social enterprise (VCSE) organisations to get the right care.

Link workers typically work with people over 6-12 contacts (including phone calls and face-to-face meetings) over a three-month period with a typical caseload of up to 250 people, depending on the complexity of people’s needs.

Care Coordinator

Care co-ordinators help to co-ordinate and navigate care across the health and care system, helping people make the right connections, with the right teams at the right time.

Our Care co-ordinators provide extra time, capacity, and expertise to support patients in preparing for clinical conversations or in follow-up discussions with primary care professionals.

They work closely with GPs and other primary care colleagues within the PCN to identify and manage a caseload of patients, making sure that appropriate support is made available to them and their carers (if appropriate), and ensuring that their changing needs are addressed. They focus on the delivery of personalised care to reflect local PCN priorities, health inequalities or at-risk groups of patients. They can also support PCNs in the delivery of Enhanced Health in Care Homes.

Clinical Pharmacists

Clinical pharmacists work in primary care as part of a multi-disciplinary team in a patient-facing role to clinically assess and treat patients using expert knowledge of medicines for specific disease areas. They work with and alongside the general practice team, taking responsibility for patients with chronic diseases and undertaking clinical medication reviews to proactively manage people with complex medication use, especially for the elderly, people in care homes and those with multiple conditions.

Paramedics

A paramedic in primary care can recognise and manage the deteriorating patient and can manage patients with long-term conditions, minor injuries and minor illness. They can also support patients who require wound care, have fallen, have MSK problems and have urinary tract or respiratory infections. Paramedics can supply a range of medicines through PGDs, including antibiotics and analgesics.

Our Paramedics can support PCNs in responding to on-the-day demand by undertaking home visiting. They can also support PCNs to improve access to care by seeing minor ailments and injuries in surgery. Paramedics can support PCNs with the delivery of Enhanced Health in Care Homes and overall their intervention should reduce the need for admission to hospital.

Physician Associates

Physician associates are healthcare professionals with a generalist medical education, who work alongside doctors providing medical care as an integral part of the multi-disciplinary team. Physician associates are dependent practitioners who work under the supervision of a fully trained and experienced doctor. They bring new talent providing a stable, generalist section of the workforce which can help ease the workforce pressures that primary care currently faces.

Our PCN Physician Associate Uzma Ahmad, works closely within the practice Physician Associate team.