This week Emma speaks to Beccy Baird, senior fellow at health think tank the King’s Fund.

Beccy is the lead author of a report the King’s Fund published in Feburary called Making care closer to home a reality – refocusing the system to primary and community care. The report looks at what needs to happen to ensure a greater share of NHS funding goes to primary care and community services and we build an NHS that is focused on communities rather than hospitals.

The report says that the government's failure to invest in primary care ranks as one of the most significant and long-running failures of NHS policy over the past 30 years.

In this interview Beccy explains why we need an NHS that is focused around primary care and community services and why, despite so many policies advocating this shift over the years, this has not happened. She also explains how she thinks we can make that move in future and what needs to happen at a national and local level to make it a reality.

This episode was presented by GPonline editor Emma Bower and produced by Czarina Deen.

Useful links

You can find the full King’s Fund report here.

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