The National Association of Primary Care (NAPC) is to become the primary care provider network for the NHS Confederation.
Today’s announcement will mean that NAPC will become a fully integrated part of the NHS Confederation.
The NAPC will retain its name and leadership, but chair Dr Charles Alessi believes the move will provide a platform to act as the exclusive vehicle for primary care provision.
He said: “NAPC has always championed high quality primary care provision that is tailored to the needs of local communities reaching beyond traditional general practice in pursuit of improvements to the health of the populations we serve.
“The NHS Confederation provides the right platform for us to act as the exclusive vehicle for primary care provision. This will allow us to expand our membership base and increase our influence and effectiveness in all areas of our work.”
NHS Confederation chief operating officer, Matt Tee, said: “The NAPC does a great job representing and developing high quality primary care provision as an integral part of our care system. They are a great fit with us, given that we represent all other providers and commissioners of NHS care. We envisage this collaboration as an opportunity to further widen the diversity of primary care providers within NAPC and to ensure that they have a central role to play within our membership in shaping future innovative care provision.”
Both organisations will be working closely together over the coming months to define the finer details of the affiliation, and NAPC members will be fully consulted as part of this process.
The agreement between the NHS Confederation and the NAPC will have no effect on NHS Clinical Commissioners, which represents clinical commissioning groups. NAPC and NHS Confederation were founding partners in NHS Clinical Commissioners, along with NHS Alliance, and will continue to both support its growth and seek close links with it into the future.
