Senior leaders from General Practice, Community Pharmacy, Dentistry and Optometry have come together to establish the Primary Care London Leadership Committee: a new cross sector leadership forum focused on strengthening collaboration, alignment and influence across London’s Primary Care system.
The Committee has been created to support, not duplicate, existing representative structures, bringing together London-wide leadership across the four pillars of Primary Care to develop a more joined up voice on the future of neighbourhood health, prevention and integrated care.
Primary Care delivers the overwhelming majority of NHS patient contacts and remains the foundation of community based healthcare. Yet too often, services, pathways and commissioning arrangements are designed in silos, creating fragmentation for patients and operational pressure across the system.
The Committee will provide a strategic forum to:
- Strengthen collaboration across General Practice, Community Pharmacy, Dentistry and Optometry
- Develop a shared Primary Care voice across London
- Support more effective neighbourhood and collaborative care models
- Improve pathway design around patient need rather than organisational boundaries
- Influence regional and national discussions affecting Primary Care delivery
Promote prevention, early intervention and care closer to home
Initial areas of focus include:
- Cross sector pathway integration
- Prevention and cardiovascular disease case finding
- Same day urgent Primary Care navigation
- Eye care and dental access pathways
- Shared communications and public understanding of Primary Care services
The ambition is simple but significant:
To enable Primary Care in London to define itself, align itself and influence as one connected system rather than four separate sectors.
As London continues to evolve neighbourhood health models and integrated care arrangements, the Committee aims to ensure frontline Primary Care leadership remains central to shaping the future of care delivery to meet the needs of Londoners.