Primary Care is a crucial component of the integrated health and care system. Up to 95% of interactions with patients, carers and other service users occur in Primary Care.
Primary Care comprises of General Practice, Pharmacy, Optometry and Dentistry. The Black Country Primary Care Collaborative (BCPCC) has been established to promote the interests, wellbeing and sustainability of all Primary Care services and more importantly, to ensure that a single voice for primary care is properly heard in decision making at all levels.
The Black Country Primary Care Collaborative brings together representatives from the 4 Places Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton to be the co-ordinated voice of Primary Care. We will engage with all partners and stakeholders to improve healthcare services to our population. We meet monthly in each of the 4 Places and representatives of those local meetings then come together monthly as the Black Country Primary Care Collaborative.
The Primary Care Collaborative has five core functions
The collaboratives are established as a representative body for all primary care services and providers at system and place, which will help develop and support:
- A collective and co-ordinating voice for Primary Care (PC) Providers general practice, pharmacy, optometry and dentistry
- Policy and decision making within the ICB and wider system
- A consistent PC offer for local people, representing value for money across the system
- A sustainable and resilient system with integrated operational processes that are fit for purpose and support the wellbeing of all staff across primary care.
The collaborative offers clinical and strategic leadership across all primary care services and providers and aims to:
- Have responsibility for providing primary care
- Manage devolved budgets, where appropriate, and in line with the ICBs operating model
- Work with commissioners to develop collective decision making on PC resources and spending
- Co-ordinate strategic planning, transformation, and integration throughout System and Place
- Focus on quality and sustainability
- Workforce planning
- Research and Innovation
- Clinical Pathways Development at System and Place in partnership with the provider collaborative to support community services and secondary care integration with primary care
The collaboratives, as representative bodies, for primary care are responsible for communicating and engaging with all primary care services and providers at System and Place and with other providers/partners within the system, particularly Place Based Partnerships. The collaboratives will ensure all staff and patients have the opportunity to be listened to and communicated with about primary care.
The collaboratives aim to develop responsibility for supporting Primary Care in its delivery of services. In doing so the collaboratives will aim to develop and implement innovative approaches to the delivery of primary care services.
The collaborative will explore options for the provision of services across the Black Country system to assist where it is determined that this would be in the best interests of the patients, providers, and the wider system to be defined in the operating principles of the provider governance.
Contact us
BCPCC is led by the chair Dr Ryan Hobson, PCN Clinical Director in Walsall and GP Partner at Umbrella Medical Practice and Vice-chair Rachael Thornton, Co-chair Dudley Primary Care Collaborative and Older Persons Specialist Pharmacist in Dudley.
If you have any questions about the Collaborative please contact bcicb.
