Primary care is the day-to-day healthcare available in every local area and the first place people go when they need health advice or treatment. It’s the first stop for symptoms that are new or for concerns about physical or mental health.

Primary care includes:

• GPs (general practitioners) – the family or local doctor; out of hours GP services
• Pharmacies (chemists)
• community and practice nurses; community midwives and health visitors
• family planning or sexual health clinics
• dentists; opticians; hearing care providers

Primary care professionals – such as GPs, practice nurses or pharmacists – help take care of the basics of care, focusing on preventing illness, making diagnoses, and treating conditions that don’t need hospital care. Another important part of the work is preventative medicine and health promotion. This can include clinics for child immunisations and smoking cessation as well as advice on lifestyle during the GP consultation. GPs also have a vital role to play in safeguarding vulnerable children and adults, and involving appropriate agencies. GPs have an important role to play in the management of not just of acute problems but also of chronic diseases and the treatment of patients with multiple health conditions, particularly in an ever increasing older population.

Primary Care Networks

NHS England’s Long-Term Plan outlined the ambition for Integrated Care Systems and the BMA GP (England) committee and NHS England agreed through national contract negotiations for the development and roll out of Primary Care Networks (PCNs). From the 1 July 2019, 9 PCNs were established in Bolton.

Also see the Geographies section of this website for a map of GP practices and the PCN each is part of.

The King's Fund has a short animation on the health and social care system under the Health and Care Act (2022) How does the NHS in England Work?

The Bolton picture

• Public Health England general practice profile
• Open prescribing - open access explorer of GP prescribing data
• General practice data hub - from NHS digital. Gives information including GP patient registrations, appointments, workforce data and more
• Dashboard on GP's and GP practices at parliamentary constituency level - from the House of Commons Library
• NHS ODS Portal – find data on NHS organisations and practitioners.
  • For a regularly updated list of GP practices
  • select 'Pre-defined reports'
  • Then 'Prescribing cost centres including GP practices (epraccurr)'
  • Then filter column 'Commisioner' to equal 00T (00T zero zero T is Bolton's code)
  • Then filter column 'Prescribing setting' to 4 (ie GP practice). The list is maintained as locations which can issue a community prescription so also includes some sites (e.g. A&E, Out Of Hours) that are not GP practices.
  • This list gives the main practice location only, for branch surgeries see table 'Branch surgeries (ebranchs)'
  • For flexible data download, use the 'user defined report' option. (On this, the role RO76 = GP Practice)
• Greater Manchester Integrated Care (Bolton)
• Bolton GP Federation

Further useful links

• NHS Organsiation Data Service - datasets on NHS organisations such as list of all GP practices
• NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBA) open data portal. Current datasets include those on dispensing of medicines, dental activity is coming soon.
• Building equitable primary care - a practical toolkit - from Queen Mary University of London
• 10 step plan to greener primary care - from NHS greater Manchester