Improving General Practice: A call to action

NHS England has launched Improving General Practice – A Call To Action, to help general practice transform the way it provides services to address the challenges its faces.

GPs see over one million people every working day, the average patient visits their doctor just over five times a year, and the demand for services across the system, including general practice and wider primary care, continues to rise.

The call for action aims to help stimulate debate amongst GP practices, area teams, CCGs, health and wellbeing boards and other community partners as to how best to develop general practice services fit for the future.

Its aim is to enable general practice to play an even stronger role at the heart of more integrated out-of-hospital services that deliver better health outcomes, more personalised care, excellent patient experience and the most efficient possible use of NHS resources.

This forms part of the wider The NHS belongs to the people: a call to action which NHS England launched on 11 July 2013.

NHS England know that there have been many projects within the VCS over recent years that have looked at how general practice could be improved for different communities.

Whilst NHS England are aware of many of these, they know there will be many more that they are currently unaware of. They are therefore asking for the help of the VCS in identifying evidence from around the country on how general practice might be improved, and especially any evidence that might help reduce health inequalities.

To feed in examples of good practice, research on how general practice could be improved etc. email jeremyglyde@nhs.net. 

For further information on General Practice call to action visit www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/com-dev/igp-cta.

For further information on The NHS belongs to the people call to action visit www.england.nhs.uk/2013/07/11/call-to-action.