Since the NHS was created in 1948, the population has grown and people are living longer. Many people are living with long term conditions such as diabetes and heart disease, or live with mental health problems and may need to access their local health services more often.

To meet these needs, practices have begun working together and with community, mental health, social care, pharmacy, hospital and voluntary services in their local areas in primary care networks.

Primary care networks build on the core of current primary care services and enable greater provision of proactive, personalised, coordinated and more integrated health and social care. Clinicians describe this as a change from reactively providing appointments to proactively caring for the people and communities they serve. Where emerging primary care networks are in place in parts of the country, there are clear benefits for patients and clinicians.

From 1^st July 2019 a local primary care network has been formed between Brandon Medical Practice, Forest Surgery, The Surgery – Lakenheath, The Market Cross Surgery, Oakfield Surgery, Orchard House Surgery, The Reynard Surgery and Rookery Medical Centre serving our combined 71,000 patients in Newmarket, Mildenhall, Brandon and the surrounding villages. We have two Clinical Directors who will plan and lead us in having a real impact on the shape of primary care in our local area. Part of this will be through better collaboration as we are able to employ more specialist clinical staff than a single practice could do alone.

We will keep you updated as the Forest Heath Primary Care Network develops.

For more information: https://www.england.nhs.uk/primary-care/primary-care-networks/