Primary Care Network

Introduction

Shipston Medical Centre is a member of the Dene and Stour Valleys Primary Care Network.

Dene and Stour Valleys Primary Care Network was set up to serve our 3 Warwickshire practices.

The purpose of Dene and Stour Valleys Primary Care Network is to encourage closer working between practices, local community services, charities and the voluntary sector.  By working at scale and in partnership we can offer additional services to our patients and provide resilience and support to our practices.

Over the last two years we have introduced Clinical Pharmacists, Social Prescribers, Care-coordinators, Diagnostic Physiotherapists, Health and Wellbeing coaches. We hope to continue to add to our teams and services to give our patients the best possible care in these challenging times.

Our 3 practices are:

• Shipston Medical Centre
• Meon Medical Centre
• Hastings House Medical Centre

What is a PCN?

Since the NHS was created in 1948, the population has grown and people are living longer. Many people are living with long term conditions such as diabetes and heart disease or suffer with mental health issues and may need to access their local health services more often.

To meet these needs, GP practices are working together with community, mental health, social care, pharmacy, hospital and voluntary services in their local areas in groups of practices known as primary care networks (PCNs).

PCNs build on the core of current primary care services and enable greater provision of proactive, personalised, coordinated and more integrated health and social care. Clinicians describe this as a change from reactively providing appointments to proactively care for the people and communities they serve. Where emerging PCNs are in place in parts of the country, there are clear benefits for patients and clinicians.

PCNs are small enough to provide the personal care valued by both people and GPs, but large enough to have impact and economies of scale through better collaboration between GP practices and others in the local health and social care system.

PCNs are led by clinical directors who may be a GP, general practice nurse, clinical pharmacist or other clinical profession working in general practice.

We want to support patients to make informed decisions about their health care and to connect them to most appropriate health or social care provider to ensure health care that is timely safe and all encompassing.