Health secretary Wes Streeting yesterday (June 12) stressed that the promised move of care out of hospitals and into the community – one of the NHS 10-year plan’s flagship three shifts – will not solely rely on general practice.
Speaking at the NHS Confed Expo in Manchester, Streeting said that he “[recognises] the pressures” in providing community health services and hopes giving integrated care boards (ICBs) a “strategic commissioning role” will ensure the shift is “not just all about GPs”.
Read more: NHS 10-yr plan ‘very GP centric’ but pharmacy role must ‘grow’
However, he failed to mention community pharmacy during his keynote speech.
The health secretary did declare that “much of what is done in a hospital today will be done on the high street...in a decade’s time”.
Read more: NHS chief: ‘Everyone’s worried’ about hospital to community shift
“The NHS should not be bound by traditional expectations of how services should be arranged,” Streeting said.
And he added that he is “open” to the “strongest” acute trusts also providing primary care and that “there is no reason why successful GPs should not be able to run local hospitals or why nurses should not be leading neighbourhood health services”.
“As plans are drawn up for the new neighbourhood health services, I will give our nation’s mayors and local government leaders a seat at the table,” he told delegates.
“Difficult challenge”
Streeting stressed that the publication of the 10-year health plan “will bring [the] era of top-down control to an end”, adding that “this has to be a decade of renewal”.
He acknowledged that “there is a long way to go”, highlighting that he has given ICBs “a really difficult challenge”, but said that he “genuinely [thinks] the NHS is finally on the road to recovery”.
“This government is walking the talk on reform and there’s plenty more to come,” he added.
Read more: Exclusive: CPhO confirms Mounjaro pharmacy service on the cards
It comes after NHS England (NHSE) national director for primary care Dr Amanda Doyle told delegates at a different talk the previous day that “primary care is not all about general practice”.
And she said that while the 10-year plan will be “very, very GP centric”, the role of community pharmacy must “grow” as it “increasingly emerges as a key clinical service provider in primary care”.
Read more: New workforce plan will be ‘radically different’, Mackey reveals
Meanwhile, NHSE chief executive Sir James Mackey told NHS Confed Expo attendees that “everyone’s worried” about the hospital to community shift.
And Mackey also told delegates that the new NHS workforce plan is set to “look and feel really quite radically different”.
