Publications

Community pharmacy is a critical part of primary care in England, but its role and relationship to the wider NHS is often poorly understood. This explainer looks at the community pharmacy sector in England, explaining how pharmacies are contracted and funded, the types of services they provide and future trends in the sector.

A key part of the NHS long-term plan, primary care networks (PCNs) will bring general practices together to work at scale. But what are they? How are they funded and held accountable? And what difference will they make? Beccy Baird explains the latest form of GP collaboration.

Social prescribing enables GPs, nurses and other primary care professionals to refer people to a range of local, non-clinical services to support their health and wellbeing. But does it work? And how does it fit in with wider health and care policy?

It has become received wisdom that the NHS struggles to adopt digital innovation, but during the Covid-19 pandemic, many NHS providers have moved services online at astonishing pace. Ben Collins looks at four digital innovations in health services from the UK and the Nordic countries.

Our submission highlights some of the key pressures and challenges the social care sector is facing and sets out some reforms the government could make to address these issues.

In an article for the BMJ, Veena Raleigh argues for improved mortality data to help fight Covid-19 and understand the longer term trend of stalling life expectancy in the UK.

The King’s Fund, Health Foundation and Nuffield Trust have submitted a joint letter to the Commons Health and Social Care Select Committee warning that it will take many months before NHS and social care organisations are able to fully restart services following the Covid-19 outbreak.

This article was first published on the BMJ website. General practices have been working together in primary care networks (PCNs) for more than a year, but now growing numbers of GPs are threatening to pull out of PCNs and the associated contract. Richard Murray explains how this situation has unfolded and suggests some potential solutions.

The urgent action needed to stabilise general practice, by addressing workload and workforce issues, raises important questions around the timing, implementation and pace of these new service specifications even though the overall direction they set out is the right one.