PARTNERS2 is a five year study which aims to develop and trial an innovative primary care based model of collaborative care for people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar.
Many people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar have minimal and poorly co-ordinated primary and specialist care. PARTNERS2 aims to help primary care (GPs and Practices Nurses) and community mental health services (also called CMHTs) work more closely together by developing a system of collaborative care based in GP surgeries.
Currently within the NHS there is a general move to shift the focus of care for many groups, including mental health, from secondary to primary care. Although primary care provides support to people with mental health problems, the coordination with secondary care is challenging in many areas of the country. Service users feedback states that some GPs do not contain sufficient specialist knowledge to support schizophrenia and bipolar; practitioners report the same knowledge and skills gap in primary care. The PARTNERS2 intervention aims to address these difficulties by agreeing and addressing individuals’ emotional, social and physical needs in a co-ordinated way by placing a secondary care practitioner within general practice in order to enhance primary mental health care provision and deliver better outcomes for individuals and their families.
The new service intervention is now entering the trial phase, in which we will be testing the model which we have based upon our findings from previous workstreams and from a test of this model with three practices. We are in the process of recruiting 60 GP practices to participate, and anticipate recruiting 300 service users when the trial begins in June 2017.
We are currently in the process of creating a webpage tailored to participant information. The details for this will be posted here when the page goes live in June 2017.
To get involved or for more information on current opportunities within the programme, please contact
Dr Humera Plappert