About Us

What is a Primary Care Network (PCN)?

What benefit does being in a PCN give me?

Your PCN is a group of GP surgeries working together. General Practice is the core of what the NHS calls “primary care” where hospitals are “secondary care” with different systems. Your PCN’s medical and non-medical team works as part of your GP surgery to give you better access to healthcare and support.

PCNs also work closely with other health and social care services to offer more personalised care. Your named GP is still responsible for the overall care you receive.

Specialised health practitioners in the PCN can often see you for some health issues instead of a GP. This means you may be seen and access specialist care more quickly. It also helps to free up GP time to make more GP appointments available for patients who need them. Sometimes, the PCN team can help you avoid a going to hospital or staying in hospital if you don’t need to.

Each of Hounslow’s five PCNs has at least one elected Clinical Director who is accountable to the GP surgeries in their PCN.

PCN Clinical Directors are responsible for:

• Helping to steer the PCN and its GP surgeries to improve the quality of care, patient experience and develop new services or ways of working to meet the health needs of the PCN’s patients.
• Encouraging and supporting the GP surgeries in the PCN to work together. This helps with things like sharing learning and experience so that patients get better outcomes from their care.
• Providing leadership to ensure the workforce in the PCN is well supported and the PCN team has the right mix of clinical and non-clinical professionals.
• Working closely with the other PCN Clinical Directors in Hounslow. This is important for when the PCNs need the same support or services, so something can be done once at a borough level instead of five times.

PCN Operational Lead

Your PCN has a manager who supports the Clinical Director, Director and PCN. Their role is to support the PCN with a wide range of business activities. For example, providing data to NHS England, supporting projects and helping all the GP surgery teams in their PCN work together and be involved in the role of the PCN. They help their PCN to work more closely with other providers for better patient care as well as identify ways to reduce health inequalities so everybody has the same access to health services in Hounslow.