FUTURE PRIMARY CARE TEAMS WILL HAVE A
WIDER SKILL MIX AND WORK IN FEDERATIONS
A wider skill mix of healthcare professionals plus 5000 more GPs are
needed in primary care to cope with the increasing pressures, the
Primary Care Workforce Commission has recommended.
The report, “The future of primary care: Creating
teams for tomorrow”, says primary care teams of
the future will need to broaden their workforce to
include physician associates, healthcare assistants,
paramedics, allied health professionals, social workers
and others. Pharmacists will increasingly become a
core part of the general practice team. Support staff
will deal with much of the administrative work, freeing
up GPs and nurses to spend more time on clinical care.
It will become normal for general practices to work
together in federations or networks, giving smaller
practices access to an extended primary care team.
Primary and community care will need to make greater
use of technology such as phone, video conference
and email to increase access and support for patients.
Email correspondence and electronic messaging
should become routine between primary care
healthcare professionals and hospital specialists.
Community nurses and health v