Care Closer to Home: Primary and Community Care Conference 2025

Siobhan Melia focused on the challenges and opportunities facing primary and community care in the face of evolving patient needs and system reform in her opening speech.

She covered how the current operating model/model of care continues to drive a ‘right drift’, not a left shift but with the upcoming 10 year health plan, ambition needs to lie at its heart – it has the opportunity to both describe what the future of the NHS will look like and support the whole system in making this a reality.  

She said that against the current challenging backdrop, leaders across primary care and community services are already showing us what this future could look like.  

A recent NHS Confederation report highlights some common-themes of the left-shift. This is not a top-down prescriptive model of change; rather a set of guiding principles we can all seek to apply and adapt them to local populations. These are: 

• A strong role for systems  
• Clinical and managerial alignment  
• Responsive and flexible financing  
• Putting patients at the centre of how to design services  
• An ability to measure what’s changed  

She referred to these three core messages attendees should have at the forefront of their thinking throughout the day: 

1. Seize the opportunity, you can enact the change to transform care  
2. Not collaborating is not an option. We can only transform care through meaningful collaboration – imperative to work across traditional boundaries  
3. Stay solutions focused

Speaker: 

• Siobhan Melia, Chief Executive, Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust

A panel discussion on how to move from rhetoric to reality and move care closer to home. The session was an opportunity to examine the emerging key themes coming out of the NHS 10 year health plan and allowed leaders from a range of sectors to discuss their ambitions for the plan, what is currently working well, current challenges and share examples of best practice.  

Discussion points included: 

• how prevention is not just telling people to do things like stopping smoking and losing weight but more about helping patients to identify and manage long-term conditions effectively
• the importance of helping people to delay the onset of frailty
• ways to scale primary care to meet growing demand 
• how community and primary care can work together to structure care pathways fit for the modern age - "patients shouldn't have to think about who they need to contact when they need support."
•  how primary and community care will be central in delivering truly personalised care for patients 
• the importance of keeping our 'why' (improving patient outcomes) at the heart of every decision

They touched on how we can develop the next generation of health and care leaders with the skills required to meet these challenges, and the importance of breaking down silos and 'simply' talking to people, to improve understanding and improve service design.

Speakers:

• Chair - Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive, NHS Confederation
• Daniel Elkeles, Chief Executive, London Ambulance Service NHS Trust
• Richard Kirby, Chief Executive, Birmingham Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust; Adviser on Neighbourhood Health, NHS England; Vice Chair, Community Network 
• Dr Amanda Doyle, National Director for Primary Care and Community Services, NHS England
• Dr Duncan Gooch, Incoming Chair, NHS Confederation's Primary Care Network 

Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester and Co-Chair of the Manchester Integrated Care Partnership Board (NHS Greater Manchester), was our keynote speaker.

He discussed the necessity of a fourth shift in health policy beyond the three proposed by the government (from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention), which involves a transition from national to local control.

He said that prevention has ‘never’ been done properly in England because the system is not set up for it, but that Greater Manchester has an opportunity to do so due to devolution. This will be through a ‘live well’ service, which will bring together public services to enable people to live healthier, better lives. He mentioned how job centres would be renamed ‘live well’ centres where people could access social prescribing alongside housing, debt and employment support.

Speaker:

• Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester

Media coverage: 

• Greater Manchester will be prevention demonstrator, says Mayor - Healthcare Leader

A fireside chat with WM5G, exploring how cutting-edge fully integrated digital systems are transforming health and care. Attendess heard about how these innovations bridge the gap between hospital and home, improving demand management, patient outcomes, and care accessibility. 

Key takeaways include: 

• Training, procurement support and culture change programmes are all crucial to helping the sector realise the full potential offered by digital transformation
• AI can improve readability of medical jargon, simplifying messages for patients and thereby improving compliance
• Connection to both patients and wider networks crucial – 30 per cent of 111 calls seek information that is readily available, whilst social needs could be answered by linking doctors to family/neighbours/friends 
• Remote medicines compliance monitoring could reduce both drug outlays and staff time spent checking on patients 
• Change management support is needed to help staff adapt to new ways of working, with consistent points of contact throughout and opportunities to share learnings and shape programme development 
• Proven use cases include medicine management, urgent community response programmes integrating health and social care teams, and community-based bowel cancer investigations 
• Digital approaches, such as virtual wards, allow professionals to smooth transitions between health, social and community care, stepping support up or down for patients as needed

Speakers:

• Chair - Michael Smith, Vice Chair, NHS Confederation's Primary Care Network 
• Rachel Williams, Associate Chief Operating Officer, South Warwickshire University NHS Trust

• Alastair Buick, NHS Clinical Entrepreneur, Clinical Director Exeter City PCN                              

• James Davies, Director, Venn Health

• Clare Morris, Chief Executive, Rethink Partners

During the session the panel demonstrated the benefit of upskilling and making the most out of the skill mix in out of hospital settings. Optometry was highlighted as an area which is underutilised and has the potential to provide significant support to the wider system, while dentistry is supporting some underutilised, fully qualified, dental therapists to work at the top of their license to expand capacity in the sector. Our primary and community members raised the significance of supporting staff as individuals, focusing on the importance of training and development for staff satisfaction, retention, and service improvement.

They identified the key behaviours for leaders of integrated or collaborative teams, the asks for the system, and the asks for primary and community providers. Neighbourhood and place level collaboration requires leaders who are able to collaborate across services, and down into their won workforce. With new at scale models emerging, it is important for each area determine the scale at which their workforce is best deployed. For example a place based provider collaborative, or a neighbourhood CIC.

Our panelists from across the primary and community workforce shared their experience designing and delivering workforce transformation in collaboration with neighbourhood partners.

Speakers: 

• Chair - Professor Aruna Garcea, Chair, NHS Confederation's Primary Care Network
• Mani Dhesi, Transformation Director, SDSmyshealthcare Federation
• Dharmesh Patel,  Chief Executive, Primary Eye Care
• Lorraine Mattis, Chief Executive, University of Suffolk Dental CIC
• Karen Jackson, Chief Executive, Locala CIC

Professor Aruna Garcea expressed gratitude to attendees, chairs, speakers, sponsors, exhibitors, and the team at the NHS Confederarion for all their hard work to deliver the conference.

She highlighted the period of unprecedented change in the NHS, emphasising the need to seize opportunities, collaborate across boundaries, and stay solutions-focused despite financial constraints.

She underscored the importance of the NHS Confederation as a hub for innovators and forward-thinkers, shaped by its members' insights and actions. Aruna drew attention to the recent publication, Beyond the waiting room: reimagining primary care for the next decade.

Aruna summarised the various critical issues covered during the day, including overcoming estates challenges, utilising workforce capabilities, creating supporting infrastructure, and integrating technology and value-based outcomes. Leadership and collaboration were identified as key themes.

Lastly, she reflected on her time as chair of the Primary Care Network, thanking colleagues and emphasising the role of the Network in developing future primary care leaders. She introduced Dr Duncan Gooch as the new chair of the Network.

Speaker: 

Professor Aruna Garcea, GP and Associate Medical Director, University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust