Lancaster Medical Practice has formed a Primary Care Network with Queen Square Medical Practice – but what does that mean?
To meet the growing needs of the UK population, Primary Care Networks (PCNs) were formed in 2019 with a number of aims including creating a stronger and more consistent collaboration between general practice and community health services. A PCN is one or more general practices working together with a range of local providers to offer coordinated health and care services – Lancaster Medical Practice is partnered with Queen Square Medical Practice, forming Lancaster Primary Care Network. We cover the whole of the Lancaster area and the surrounding villages, making up around 80,000 patients.
The formation of the Lancaster Primary Care Network has not involved the creation of new structures and organisations and as such should not dramatically impact the services that our patients access. It should, however, provide more effective and sustainable collaboration between existing organisations and allow for the addition of new services that patients can access.
We have been working closely with Queen Square Medical Practice on a number of different community projects. Collaboration on these programmes aims to better serve our patients and provide the best service we can. We have also been able to employ staff as a Primary Care Network meaning they can work freely between the two practices; including physiotherapists and pharmacists.
Going forward we hope that as a PCN we will be able to deliver more of these programmes to our patients and improve the quality of our services through the collaboration of primary care organisations.
Page last reviewed: March 5th, 2024
Next review due: March 5th, 2025