Matt Aiello is the national programme lead at Health Education England for Urgent and Emergency Care and for Physician Associates. In this episode we focus on the continuing introduction of the Physician Associate role into primary care. Matt explains how the profession is expanding supported by Health Education England, how the role supports general practice, how the recognition and regulation of the profession is being approached and offers some advice for practices wishing to appoint a PA.

Robin Miller is a Senior Fellow at the Health Services Management Centre of the University of Birmingham. Robin is heavily involved in research into the transformation of primary care. In this episode he shares some of the lessons that have emerged from this research including a study of the Aspiring for Clinical Excellence programme developed by a CCG in Birmingham. He looks at what transformation means, how innovation can be encouraged, how practical is the expectation that transformation will save money and how GPs and CCGs need to change their mind-sets if transformation is going to work.

In this episode Ben talks to two people behind an innovative initiative to develop the next generation of primary care leaders. The NHS@2030 programme was developed under the auspices of NHS England, the Thames Valley Strategic Clinical Network and the Thames Valley and Wessex Leadership Academy with the intention “…to grow individual confidence, courage and the conviction to transform care, and establish a system of continuous quality improvement for patients and primary care teams alike” In fact, the content of the programme was a co-production with its participants. To hear all about the programme and how this co-production process works, Ben talks to Marion Lynch from NHS England South and former CCG Chief Executive Alan Webb.

John Tacchi is the Programme Director for Integration at North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust, a provider of mental health, social care and learning disability services in the West Midlands. In this episode John talks about his role leading the Trust’s Primary Care Integration Strategy which offers GP practices a range of benefits from full integration into the Trust to the provision of back office functions. John explains how the integration is working and the benefits that the new service driven model and locality working is delivering for GP teams and for the Trust.