WARRINGTON’S Primary Care Networks (PCNs) have launched a consultation on the town’s extended access service to ensure proposed plans meet the needs of local residents.
Currently, all GP practices must provide some additional appointments every week before or after normal opening times for their own patients; this is known as extended hours.
In addition, clinical commissioning groups must make sure that patients can access appointments with primary care clinicians and staff in convenient locations across the town again outside of the hours that you can go to your registered practice; this is known as extended access.
From October 2022 NHS England has decided that these two services should come together and form one service that will be known as Enhanced Access.
Currently, appointments are available at Bath Street Health and Wellbeing Centre. New proposals, however, will consider the service moving from Bath Street and expand to fixed location across Warrington for each day of the week, making the service more accessible for patients.
CCGs are currently responsible for commissioning (buying) extended access services. However, with the national development of Primary Care Networks (PCNs), the funding and responsibility for extended access will transfer from CCGs to PCNs by October 2022.
Before the service launches in October 2022, Warrington’s five PCNs are asking people to consider whether the following are convenient:
· Times of appointments
· Appointment days
· Location of appointments
The consultation will also take into consideration the extended hours service currently provided at Eric Moore Partnership.
The new service is currently being trialled at the proposed venues before the launch of the new service.
In a recent patient PCN-led satisfaction survey about the extended access pilot, 97% of respondents were either very satisfied or satisfied with the overall experience, 94% said they would recommend the service to their friends and family and 85% said the location of the appointment was convenient.
You can access the extended access service consultation on NHS Warrington CCG’s website page: Enhanced Access Consultation 2022 (haltonwarringtonccg.nhs.uk)
You can find out more about PCNs in the consultation document and via the NHS website PCN page: https://www.england.nhs.uk/primary-care/primary-care-networks/.
The closing date for the consultation is Tuesday 26th July 2022.
