NHS Alliance Specialists' Network

A network of Consultants and Specialist doctors employed by PCTs plus those interested in models of close working practices between primary and secondary care clinicians.

Specialist clinicians survey 2007
The NHS Alliance Specialists Network invites all specialist doctors working in community health services and primary care to complete a single A4 side survey.The aim of this survey is to gather the views of specialist clinicians (Consultants, Staff and Associate Specialist doctors, GPwSI) about the impact of NHS reforms on their service and also their vision for the NHS over the next 10 years. The results of the survey will be useful to prepare a position document about the role of specialists working in community services /primary care trusts in the 'new NHS'.

NHS Alliance as an organisation also intends to feed into Prof Ara Darzi's review of the NHS and your views would be useful for this too. All this would be possible only if sufficient numbers of responses are returned. The completed survey can be returned to the NHS Alliance national office, either by email (admin@nhsalliance.org) or fax (01777 869081) by 8 August. If you know of colleagues who would find the survey relevant, please pass this information to them too.

Several years prior to the publication of the Government White Paper (Our Health, Our Care, Our Say), groups of Consultants and Specialist doctors from specialties traditionally found in secondary care (hospitals), opted to move their services and employment contracts into the newly emerging Primary Care Organisations. The aim was to work closely in partnership with primary care and social care and develop a service responsive to the patients' needs. However, these specialists often found themselves in a "no-man's land" between the Consultants based in hospital departments and predominantly GP issues dominating PCT agendas. These services typically consisted of a handful of clinicians working in isolation and struggling with issues around clinical governance, accountability and the uncertainty about future of PCT provider services.

The Specialists' network, hosted by NHS Alliance, started as a peer support group for these specialists. It has steadily expanded and now advises specialists about various working models and good practice examples of closer working between primary and secondary care clinicians.

Network website: http://www.nhsalliance.org
Network contact: Dr Minoo Irani, minoo.irani@berkshire.nhs.uk, 01753 635537

Useful documents