The conversation period is now closed.
The NHS Black Country Integrated Care Board (ICB) is working with system partners on a programme of work to transform and improve primary care over the next five years.
Primary care includes general practice, community pharmacy, dental and optometry services. These services are often the first places people go to for help with their health.
Right now, we are focusing on improving general practice and community pharmacy, while we also start to understand the issues facing dental and optometry services.
Looking to the future, we know that primary care needs to improve to make it work better for us all. The traditional way of providing and accessing primary care is not able to manage the increasing number of requests for care. Only by listening to, and working with people who provide and receive services will we create a fairer and more effective primary care system that meets the needs of our people and communities.
This is also summarised in our ‘Future Primary Care Conversation’ document.
Our strategy focuses on the following key priorities:
Improve access to unplanned care in general practice, which is joined up better with community pharmacy, making it easier for people to access the right support first time.
Address the care needs of people in the Black Country living with one or more long-term health conditions or disabilities by enhancing personalised care, ensuring continuity and improving integration and collaboration among care partners.
Equip patients with the knowledge, skills and confidence to manage their own health and care. Prevent local people from becoming unwell and those with diagnosed conditions getting worse, by working with health and care partners using shared data to provide the right services and resources for better health education and support.
Enable primary care colleagues to perform at their best, with dedicated time to learn and innovate, as well as access to consistent education, training and development opportunities.
The strategy has been created based on the ICB’s Five-Year Joint Forward Plan published earlier this year, the national direction of travel set out in the Fuller Stocktake report, and ongoing insights and analysis through engagement with the local population, NHS and Local Authority partners and wider stakeholders.
Join the Future Primary Care Conversation to help transform services across the Black Country
We want to understand local people’s views on areas in this strategy so that together with GPs and health leaders, we can start to improve things further to shape the future of primary care in response to local needs.
From 12 August 2024 to 20 September 2024, we invited you to participate in the 'Future Primary Care Conversation.' This was your chance to share your experiences and ideas to help us transform primary care in the Black Country.
For more information, please read our Future Primary Care in the Black Country public conversation document
This is also available in the following formats:
How you can have your say
The conversation period is now closed. Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. The report detailing the findings can be found here.
