To promote and coordinate the provision of primary care services within member practices.

Represent practices in planning and delivery forums.

Develop plans and proposals in response to the needs of patients where primary care at scale is required.

Deliver services though individual practices, specialist network-wide services as patient needs dictate

We provide the following education & training programs. If you would like more information please contact us.

The Locum Bank is being developed by Together First. It aims to stop the leaking away of our current GPs in training to other parts of the country or world and to create an alternative to locuming for those who want a varied job after completion of training. We are developing a series of posts based partly in local practices and partly in areas of either clinical or quality improvement specialization.

The New to Nursing Program is a fully funded HENCEL project brought into Barking and Dagenham. Currently, 12 nurses wishing to become practice nurses are working 2.5 days in General Practice and spending 2.5 days in training across Barking and Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge.

The Clinical Pharmacist in GP Practices Pilot was bid for directly by us from NHS England. It has given us partial funding to employ 7 pharmacists and 3 senior pharmacists. In addition, it provides full funding for training for pharmacists to become independent prescribers and integrated parts of the practice team.

There are two ‘out of hours’ access hubs in Barking & Dagenham which enable patients to be seen after the surgery closes.

A minimum of two local GPs work at each access hub and patients are offered a booked appointment during the evening or weekend. Please note only Barking Hospital is open at weekends.

If you would like to see a GP over the weekend at one of our hubs, you may prefer to pre-book your appointment from Thursday onwards.

Patients from all over the borough are seen at one of two locations. The call centre staff offer the patient the most convenient hub although the patient has the choice of either site.

Monday to Friday: 14:00-21:00
Saturday:  09:00-17:00
Sunday: 09:00-16:00
Bank Holidays:  09.00-15.00

Experienced call handlers are ready to take your call

Monday to Friday: 18:30-22:00
Saturday: 08:00-20:00*
Sunday: 08:00-20:00*

*Barking Hospital Only

Patients can book an appointment by calling:
020-3770 1888

With the publication of the latest reports from NHS England – General Practice Forward View, and the Understanding Pressures in general practice survey by the Kings Fund , it is clear that we need to find new ways of doing things in primary care.

• We need to maintain and motivate our staff and build stronger MDT teams.
• We need to maximise income, and identify savings where-ever we can.
• We need to address the shortage of staff within the local health economy and ensure that we continue to provide high quality service to our patients.

At Together First, we strongly believe that we can respond to these needs by working collaboratively together, across member practices to share experiences and solutions to the current system pressures

We support service development in the following ways. If you would like more information please contact us.

Together First is working closely with Public Health Barking and Dagenham to support practices in delivering the NHS Health Checks. We are delighted to be able to work with local practices, to develop this service for patients. The project provides a combination of administration and clinical support working with the practice team and requires no additional work for the practice If you want more information on how we can help practices please contact together.first@nhs.net