Infection prevention and control: Primary Care

In Salford, there are 44 GP practices located across five Primary Care Networks, delivering essential GP services to the whole of the Salford population. 

What are Primary Care Networks (PCNs)? 

Since the NHS was created in 1948, the population has grown, and people are living longer. Many people are living with long term conditions such as diabetes and heart disease or suffer with mental health issues and may need to access their local health services more often.

To meet these needs, GP practices are working together with community, mental health, social care, pharmacy, hospital, and voluntary services in their local areas in groups of practices known as primary care networks (PCNs).

PCNs build on existing primary care services and enable greater provision of proactive, personalised, coordinated and more integrated health and social care for people close to home.

Clinicians describe this as a change from reactively providing appointments to proactively caring for the people and communities they serve.

For further information on PCNs, please visit Primary care networks on the NHS England website.

The Health Protection team support GP practices by offering:

• Annual Infection control training to clinical and non-clinical staff 
• Leading and supporting with key service improvements: for example, cancer screening and immunisation
• Quality assurance with regular GP audits for IPC (infection prevention and control)
• Monthly Healthcare associated infection (HCAI) root cause analysis reporting.

Further resources: 

For more information on the GP services in your area, please visit: Greater Manchester Integrated Care Partnership.