Vision for London’s primary care

We want London to have accessible, coordinated and proactive primary care that provides services designed and tailored around the needs of individuals. We aspire to a higher quality of care leading to improved patient satisfaction and clinical outcomes. We want to ensure there is increased capacity through having more efficient health and care services which are better value for money.

Why is change necessary?

General practice has served patients, the public and the NHS for over 60 years. It has delivered accessible, high quality, value for money care, but patients’ needs are changing, both in the complexity of their conditions and in their expectations.

GPs are facing an increasing workload and there is a workforce crisis looming, as a large proportion of GPs in the capital are nearing retirement age and practice nurses are becoming increasingly difficult to recruit. All of the above challenges are occurring at the same time as investment in general practice has fallen significantly as a proportion of total health spends.

These challenges were highlighted in Lord Darzi’s Better Health for London and the NHS Five Year Forward View reports outlining the urgent need for investment and reform in general practice.

If the NHS is going to provide the excellent standard of care to which we all aspire, we will have to be more innovative. London needs solutions that will sustain and improve general practice for the next 60 years. It is crucial GPs and the wider primary care professionals are supported to spend more time with patients to provide the holistic, individual and continuous care that Londoners deserve.

We have been developed a response to these challenges, the Transforming primary Care in London: A Strategic Commissioning Framework sets out a bold new vision for primary care in the capital centred around the three aspects of care:

Proactive care – supporting and improving the health and wellbeing of the population, self-care, health literacy, and keeping people healthy
Accessible care – providing a personalised, responsive, timely and accessible service
Coordinated care – providing patient- centred, coordinated care and GP-patient continuity

Read Transforming primary care in London: A Strategic Commissioning Framework

Vision for London’s primary care

Why is change necessary?

Further reading