Realising the potential of primary care provider collaboratives

Primary care provider collaboratives are largely new, with many having formed over the last two years. In many areas, they are built on the success of GP federations, with others operating under relatively informal arrangements. There is significant variation in the formation of primary care provider collaboratives, with differing governance arrangements, variation in their geographical coverage and differences in their overarching purpose. 

For those more ‘mature’ collaboratives, some welcomed the opportunity to go further. For example, looking at the spectrum of 24/7 urgent care, supporting waiting list recovery and being the anchor for neighbourhood health centres. 

Primary care provider collaboratives are undergoing a significant evolution and development in response to the drive for integrated care and the need to ensure the contribution and role of primary care is effectively included. Many have already demonstrated benefits of providing a coordinated and large-scale response from primary care, as well as the ability to contribute to work across the system and in some cases, to deliver services. 

There is an opportunity for primary care provider collaboratives to support the shift to care closer to home, driving transformation and working with partners to deliver that change. 

Relationships are a critical factor in primary care provider collaboratives, both within the collaborative, and with the wider system or at place. Most primary care provider collaboratives focus on general practice, but some include or plan to include pharmacy, optometry, audiology and dentistry. 

While some collaboratives are directly delivering services, most are currently providing a collective voice for primary care/general practice within their system or at place, ensuring that primary care is represented in discussions, has input into pathway design and is consulted on issues that affect primary care. 

The relative immaturity of primary care provider collaboratives provides significant scope for their development in the future but there was concern from collaboratives about their sustainability. While they had made progress there remained a need to consistently push for primary care providers to have an effective voice in system and place level decision-making.