Introduction to Primary Care as a Care Coordinator
Welcome to your new role as a care coordinator. You will be working with your primary care network (PCN) team to support people through personalised care, helping people to improve their health and wellbeing by treating them
holistically and starting from what matters to them.
Care coordinators will play an important role within a PCN to proactively identify and work with people,
including the frail/elderly and those with long-term conditions, to provide coordination and navigation of care
and support across health and care services.
The care coordinator role will ensure patient health and care planning is timely, efficient, and patient-centred. The
role will include responsibilities for the coordination of the patient’s journey through primary care and secondary
care. This is achieved by bringing together all the information about a person’s identified care and support needs
and exploring options to meet these within a single personalised care and support plan, based on what matters to
the person. The care coordination role is embedded within the Primary Care Network Direct Enhanced Service, which aligns to the NHS Long Term Plan’s commitment to make personalised care business as usual across the health and care system1.
You are joining primary care networks at a very exciting time. The Network Contract DES Specification 2020/212 provides reimbursement for three personalised care roles based in PCNs: social prescribing link workers, health and wellbeing coaches, and care coordinators.
Supporting information on these three roles can be found in the Network Contract DES Guidance 2020/21.
The introduction of health and wellbeing coaches and care coordinators from April 2020 is in addition to the existing
social prescribing link worker role which has been in place since July 2019.
Working together through a single point of access, these three roles reduce and support the workload of GPs and
other staff by supporting people to take more control of their health and wellbeing and addressing wider detriments of health, such as poor housing, debt, stress and loneliness. Your contribution enriches the skill mix of primary care teams. As a result, people have improved lives, benefit from timely access to health services, and are supported to develop the skills and confidence to manage their own health and wellbeing. These roles are intended to become an integral part of the core general practice throughout England, embedding personalised care within PCNs and supporting all professionals to take a personalised care approach. These are exciting times, and you are a part of it.
This welcome pack won’t give you all the information you need, but we hope it will help you to find your feet in your
new role. It will also point you in the direction of more detailed information that might be useful to you.
