What are Local Professional Networks?

This week I attended a meeting on the development of the Local Professional Networks. Now that the NHS Commissioning Board has legally come into being there is a lot of interest and speculation as to how the Board will work in practice. I wish I could say that it is all crystal clear to me now but I can’t and at this stage I don't think any one else can either. I do know that the contract for community pharmacy will transfer to the NHS CB, and that the board will have a field force and these Local Professional Networks which will work with CCGs and the Health and Wellbeing Boards on strategy and planning, operation and delivery and engagement and support. The purpose of these networks being to provide the clinical expertise to improve quality in primary care services.

At the moment how all this will be achieved is not clear and in the life of a reorganisation of this magnitude, the next 18 months will go past in a flash. I will have to keep our LPC at the heart of local developments and hopefully test some of the models being proposed.

I also went to some media training and found myself practicing radio interviews and live broadcasting, something we definitely need to do more of.  I thought I was doing fine until my radio interviewer asked me what record I would choose for the listeners….it was an interview about diabetes!...You know how your mind goes blank and panic sets in…all I could think of was “I Feel Good” by the late great James Brown…well at least I didn’t pick ‘Sweets for my Sweet’.