Rahul Chaudhari, Director of Primary Care, presented the PowerPoint presentation and focused on:

The 10 Year Plan – greatest focus on improving primary care networks, whole of England would be covered by Integrated Care Systems by 2021, significant levels of investment, a big push to get people healthy, look at clinical priorities, workforce and the role of digital. That all registered patients would be covered by a Primary Care Network by June 2019 with general practitioners taking the lead, for those non-participating practices a Primary Care Network would be identified to provide network services to patients, the Directed Enhanced Service would apply from 1 July 2019. The networks key outcomes would improve sustainability for general practitioners, provide a wider range of services, stronger collaboration with the wider health and care system and support management of financial and estate pressures. The requirements in 2019/20 would be available to 100% of patients and from April 2020 expected to deliver against the five national service specifications with two further service specifications applying from April 2021. The Additional Roles, the participation in Network Contract Directed Enhanced Service and timescales were briefly explained. The PowerPoint presentation was available as part of the Agenda.

Councillor Holloway, Councillor Muldowney and Ian Evans, Thurrock Coalition, agreed as the report detail was insufficient and not Thurrock specific a further report was required to answer their concerns and questions. The Chair agreed that reports should be presented to Committee complete rather than piecemeal and requested that a report was presented again at the 5 September 2019 committee. Rahul Chaudhari advised that the timing of the Health and Wellbeing Overview and Scrutiny Committee coincided with the time line where Thurrock Primary Care Networks were being formally ratified and assessed and so it had not been possible to give any more details and put a Thurrock context to it at this time. A detailed report could be made available in time for the September committee.

Ian Wake, Director of Public Health, stated that this was a good news story for Thurrock. With unacceptable levels of care in Thurrock between general practitioners this would bring practices together in networks where best practices could be shared amongst them and incentives given to those practices not performing so well. The Primary Care Networks would fit well with the transformation plans already in place and with Thurrock way ahead of the curve in areas such as primary care in transformation work, mixed skills clinical workforce. Ian Wake stated that a lot of the proposals in the report were already being undertaken by Thurrock and would be good practice to roll out to other areas.

Roger Harris, Corporate Director of Adults, Housing and Health, stated that a report on Adult Social Care would be presented at the 5 September 2019 committee and suggested that both reports be brought back together.

Councillor Redsell stated the report to be presented in September should be able to answer those questions that members receive with regards to complaints on general practitioners.

Councillor Ralph noted the inconsistencies amongst general practitioners in the borough and would like to see feedback on the digital stat and more information on google searching in the September report.

Councillor Rigby questioned whether the funding to practices was additional funding from Government or had it been taken away from other NHS services. Rahal Chaudhari stated that it was additional funding which was not far reaching enough. The challenge was getting residents not to listen to Dr Google.

Councillor Muldowney stated coming back to Dr Google stated her big concerns based on the reading of the subject and Officers saying that there have been varying results from the trials they were doing around digital about how much better and saying that some of these APPS are at the moment. Councillor Muldowney stated that personally she thought the one that had been taken on board nationally probably should not have been rolled out yet to live patients and should still be in beta testing as she did not think it had been properly developed enough. So this was her concern at this level that we are not falsely reassuring people who may have something more serious but would not necessarily get picked up. I think that was one of the concerns that I have got but also the accuracy and the actual fit for purpose of whatever we are using I just want to make sure that it was really robust.

Mandy Ansell stated that clinician groups were up and running with physiotherapy groups fully booked. The groups were treating real people in the right place with further capacity being built into local hubs.

The Chair thanked Officers for the update and looked forward to a more detailed report in September.