Primary Care Network Workforce - 30 June 2020

This is the second time that information about the PCN workforce has been collected. Around 88% of the PCNs had activated user accounts for the NWRS tool by 30 June 2020, and many of these users were already experienced with the GP practice-level submissions.

However, user feedback and other evidence indicate that the completion of the NWRS continues to be adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the data coverage and completeness is still very low, even for a new data collection. This should be taken into consideration when reviewing the figures.

Of the 1250 PCNs active during the second quarter of 2020:

• 87.9% had activated their NWRS user account by the end of June 2020 and 497 (39.8%), submitted data across 103 of the 135 CCGs, including ten CCGs where every PCN submitted workforce data.
• Conversely, all PCNs in 32 CCGs failed to submit any valid workforce data.
• Fifteen PCNs provided information about pooled resource only; as we cannot determine how many people are working in the affected roles, this means that the applicable PCNs show a count of zero in the headcount table (2b) and that the headcounts presented in table 1b are based upon returns from 482 PCNs .

The PCN population is still evolving and the size of their workforces varies. 88% of the PCNs submitting information reported fewer than five FTE staff although it is not clear whether these low counts are because additional people have not yet been recruited, or whether their details could not be entered into the NWRS in time for the data extract.

232 PCNs provided details of their clinical directors of which four were sharing the responsibility between a Medical Director (GP) and a Nursing or Direct Patient Care clinical director. A further six PCNs failed data validation as they did not include any hours for their clinical directors whose records were therefore excluded.

The PCNs are still developing. Some PCNs that were created during 2019 have subsequently merged into a single organisation while others have divided to form several PCNs. Similarly, a small number of GP practices have changed their PCN membership at some point since July 2019, while a couple of practices left their PCN without joining another.

The figures reported in this release are effective on 30 June 2020. However, because the data are not complete and the coverage is poor, users should be mindful that these figures may not be properly representative of the size of the PCN workforce.

Please refer to the Background Data Quality section for more general information about the PCN data quality.