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How first contact practitioners facilitate the NHS Long Term Plan

How first contact practitioners facilitate the NHS Long Term Plan

The NHS Long Term Plan

Recommendations from the NHS Long Term Plan were that the 2020s show movement towards a proactive, predictive, and personalised prevention strategy within primary care networks. This encouraged the creation of multi-disciplinary teams (MDTs), to increase capacity and provide collaborative, community services. It was acknowledged that a growing skillset among AHPs would support a reduction in GP numbers, to assist in the facilitation of these new models of care to support the Getting it Right First Time (GIRFT) national programme.

An FCP reduces the demand and workload on the general practitioner and optimises patient care ensuring they are positioned in the correct place, in the quickest time and with appropriate tests and information.

Facts and figures

Podiatrists in primary care can reduce the burden on public health

  • 8% of GP consultations for MSK are for foot and ankle pain, which in November 2021 would have equated to 435,000,000 appointments reduced throughout the UK for MSK presentations of the foot and ankle alone. Considering all other non-musculoskeletal lower limb presentations too:
  • 6 million people have cardiovascular disease
  • 20% of people aged 60+ in the UK are affected by peripheral arterial disease (PAD)
  • 5% of the population is living with lower limb wounds – this is growing at an estimated 12% per year
  • 9 million people in the UK have diabetes, and 13.6 million are at risk of T2DM

Podiatrists in primary care can reduce the burden on secondary care

  • More than:100,000 strokes each year, of which 34,000 will be fatal, and more than 100,000 admissions for heart attacks
  • Over 11,500 major lower-limb amputations are carried out every year in the UK, the vast majority of which are as a direct result of PAD, diabetes, or a combination of the two
  • Podiatrists specialise in the early detection and management of this condition preventing avoidable heart attacks, strokes, amputation, and early death.
References

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