The primary-secondary care interface is not effective at ensuring efficient continuity of patient care between settings, a new survey has found.
The State of Primary Care survey was undertaken earlier this year across Hospital Pharmacy Europe and its sister titles. The respondents consisted of 1,795 NHS healthcare professionals, 1,294 of whom worked in primary care and 292 worked in secondary care in England.
It found that only 15% of respondents thought the primary-secondary care interface was effective at ensuring continuity, with 52% saying it was not effective.
Around 17% also said that primary care networks (PCNs) had improved collaboration between primary and secondary care, but 59% said they disagreed with this.
Most respondents (68%) added that they would like to see an improvement in the movement of patients between primary and secondary care prioritised by the next Government.
In June, NHS England asked ICBs to act as ‘referees’ to resolve ‘tension’ between primary and secondary care around workload and referrals.
NHS England‘s deputy medical director, Dr Kiren Collison, said there was ‘a lot of tension at times’ between primary and secondary care and that NHS England was trying to ‘get away from that’.
NHS Confederation recently said that there were four ‘key ingredients’ needed to ‘shift the dial’ in relationships between primary and secondary care. These were better understanding, shared information, improving communication methods and shared robust guidelines.
In April, NHS England‘s ‘2024/25 priorities and operational planning guidance‘ said that every hospital trust will be required to have a designated lead for the primary-secondary care interface.
And last year, the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges also set out 10 administrative changes that could be made to improve the way in which hospital and general practice staff work together. This included establishing regular ‘interface groups’, a primary care liaison officer, shared mailboxes and non-public phone numbers.
The State of Primary Care survey took place between April 29 and May 20 2024 across Hospital Pharmacy Europe, Hospital Healthcare Europe and our primary care sister titles Healthcare Leader, Pulse PCN, Pulse, Nursing in Practice, The Pharmacist and Management in Practice.
There were 1,795 responses from healthcare professionals. The majority of respondents, totalling 1,294 (72%), work in primary care in England. A further 292 (16%) work in secondary care in England. In addition, 124 (7%) work in primary or secondary care outside of England and 85 (5%) do not work in primary or secondary care. There were answers from across England with all 42 ICBs represented.
A version of this article was originally published by our sister publication Healthcare Leader.
