Exclusive Cambridgeshire and Peterborough ICB has unveiled further detail on its planned care model overhaul, including a central patient ‘helpdesk’ and a shift of funding towards general practice.
An updated draft plan said it will invest up to £205m into the radical overhaul, which will also see new neighbourhood hubs being introduced to bring together general practice and other services.
The ICB said the plans will mean an increase in funding spent on primary care to 24.6% by 2028/29 – up from 22.6% in the current financial year.
Pulse revealed in October that the ICB was looking for an ‘IT partner’ to create a ‘digital front door’, as part of wider plans aiming to move care out of hospital.
The new documents say this will take the form of a new ‘nerve centre’, which will have a patient helpdesk serving one million people in the area, in a bid to save GP staff time spent dealing with patient requests.
The overhaul also includes:
- 15 to 20 local neighbourhood hubs, each serving 30,000 to 70,000 patients, ‘bringing together existing services’ such as GP practices, district nurses, care workers, physiotherapists, palliative care and mental health
- Six ‘community super hubs’, looking after 150,000 to 200,000 patients each, and including out-of-hours GP services, pharmacy, community diagnostics, speciality out-patients and ‘simple day surgical services’.
The plan said: ‘It will create a “no wrong door” patient helpdesk designed to help callers with a range of queries such as where they are in a referral process or waiting list, releasing time for GP practice staff who would otherwise deal with this.
‘For example, where patients are unsure what is happening with their referral for an out-patient appointment or hospital procedure, helpdesk staff will use access to appropriate levels of primary, community and secondary care information systems to advise, and where appropriate point patients to waiting well information and support services.
‘This will save time for GP practice staff and through centralising a function currently replicated in each individual provider, create productivity and efficiency gains.’
The ICB added that the plan is ‘intentionally high-level’ and it will serve as the ICB’s commissioning intentions for 2025-28.
Under the plans, patients would continue to use existing points of contact, such as calling an ambulance or 111 for urgent needs, but for healthcare professionals there would be ‘a single point of access for clinical advice, guidance and onward services’ within the ‘nerve centre’.
The ICB is planning to invest between £180m and £205m on this overhaul in the next five years.
The document added: ‘In summary, assuming a five year funding settlement based on flat cash plus inflation, we would be able to create an investment pot of between £180m rising to a maximum of £205m over the period.
‘There is a further opportunity around the tech fund announced nationally, although this is yet to be quantified, as well as use of capital funds.’
The ICB discussed and approved the draft proposal at a board meeting earlier this morning, and Pulse was told that ‘work will continue with partners to further develop’ the plan.
Pulse has contacted Cambridgeshire LMC for comment. The LMC has previously said it had ‘listened and challenged’ when presented with the draft plan, but as of last summer it was still awaiting ‘robust answers’ to ‘questions and concerns’.
It comes after the new Government has pledged to ‘reform’ primary care, trialling ‘neighbourhood health centres’ which would have GPs and other community health staff ‘under one roof’. It is currently working on a new 10-year NHS plan, expected to be published in the ‘spring’.
Last year, an independent investigation into the NHS, led by Lord Ara Darzi, found that neighbourhood working and multidisciplinary teams will be the way forward for the system.
In October, North West London ICB also drew up similar plans to introduce integrated neighbourhood teams inspired by the Fuller Stocktake. These included 25 integrated neighbourhood teams, each made up of one or more PCNs and of about 100 staff members, looking after a population of 50,000 to 100,000 residents.
Providers ‘will work towards hub arrangements’ in which core services will be housed ‘behind a single reception’, creating a ‘single neighbourhood hub’ that provides ‘a range of health and care services’.
Can everybody else see the end point
1) I can’t get to see my GP- ring your GP
2) I want to know where i am in the referral process- we are too busy and there are not enough staff to handle your query. Why don’t you ring your GP
3) “dear GP , I have assessed this patient. He now needs the following long list of invesitgations, onward referral, these inappropriate prescritptions. Would you mind following him tomorrow and then every 2 weeks for 6 month, then every month for 1 year….
4) “we are above capacity due to illness/pressures/reallocation of staff due to winter pressures, please ring your GP practice for help and advice instead because they are a free and unlimited resource
5) if in doubt, why don’t you just contact your GP who can sort it out.
All sounds too familiar, with no one to actually take responsibility and the buck being passed back to the risk sink which is …..yup…..your GP.
yep t will be like in hours 111; a costly duplication service to do a shite job of what we do well, and removing funding that could come directly to general practice. Yay. Then we can have 111 and the ‘nerve centre’ being funded just for all the work to come back to us.
What a waste of money. It will be 111 passing it back to the GP again.
All the above and clear to everyone in my opinion, except the same recycled managers within the ICB, NHSE , PCNs etc , causing ongoing chaos year after year with associated staggering waste of NHS resources and decline in every other aspect of the NHS . At what stage will this barefaced ineptitude be held to account for the continuing harm caused to patients and demoralisation of the NHS workforce which appears to be their only actual accomplishment?
Mind you , in my view when they are wasting other peoples £205 million why would they care?
How would this enable patients? Plain daft.
Patient want to see a doctor when they have a problem day or night. Any scheme that does not involve it is waste of money. Imagine another hub with 50 options . Click this and click that and when you are tired hang up..
These morons will literally fund any stupid waste of money scheme apart from general practice.
The plan to invest more in general practice and set up neighborhood hubs sounds promising, but the details are still very vague. A central patient helpdesk could save GPs time, but there’s a risk it might not work smoothly without proper resources and training. It’s good to see a focus on integrating services, but past experiences show these big ideas often take too long to deliver real change on the ground.