Internationalising primary healthcare Sarah Cartledge discusses the importance of primary healthcare with Jyoti Mehan, CEO Health Care First Partnership
T
he UK’s National Health Service or NHS has often been a conundrum for international healthcare providers. They admire the concept of free healthcare at the point of delivery, but can misunderstand this complex organisation which is divided into 223 hospital trusts, 135 clinical 26
commissioning groups, 1300 primary care networks (PCNs) with around 10,000 general physicians known as GPs, and several other groups that oversee its work in different ways. So it’s not a model that is easily replicable, but it has more than 70 years of learning that can be adapted on a global level.
The first port of call in the UK is the general practice service, offering a care navigation system that can resolve varied issues without involving secondary intervention. But in many countries across the world, the cultural norm is to take any medical problem to a hospital where it can be dealt with, regardless of urgency. So in these countries, introducing the GP system could meet resistance through lack of understanding and a mismatch of system incentives. This is where Jyoti Mehan and her colleagues at Health Care First come in, offering a consultancy package for overseas providers that embraces the ethos of general practice while ensuring it aligns to cultural nuances and demographic requirements to enhance the provision of healthcare.
