Overview

The planned care programme covers the interface between secondary care and general practice, including:

• elective care
• diagnostics
• referrals
• planned care pathways

The GPCB planned care committee steers the programme and comprises of GPs and practice managers from all localities across BNSSG. It includes the GPCB clinical leads for planned care and Avon Local Medical Committee.

Its aims are:

• To give the system a single reference point when considering any change
• To ensure practice skills and experience inform any change
• To ensure assessment of resources and impact on services and patients before implementing any change
• To ensure practice priorities for change are highlighted to the wider system

The GPCB planned care programme is funded by the ICS. This enables general practice to participate in key discussions and decisions in the same way as the acute hospital trusts and Sirona care & health. This is significant, as it means general practice can influence existing projects, and raise its own at-scale issues at system level to find solutions together.