PCNs · GP Practices · Primary Care
PPIE for Primary Care Networks That Reaches Your Community
Patient and public involvement for PCNs and GP practices. We help you understand population health needs, engage seldom-heard communities, strengthen patient participation groups, and demonstrate meaningful involvement to ICBs and CQC.
Why PCNs choose us
PCNs need to understand population needs, tackle health inequalities, and demonstrate patient involvement - often with limited time and budget. Traditional patient panels reach the same engaged people. Surveys get low response rates. Meanwhile, you're serving diverse communities with complex needs.
We help Primary Care Networks reach beyond the usual voices, understand what your population actually needs, and deliver credible PPIE that strengthens bids, satisfies ICB requirements, and improves care.
PPIE services for PCNs and GP practices
From rapid community consultations to sustained patient participation groups, we tailor involvement to PCN budgets, timelines, and requirements.
Population Health Needs Assessment
Understand what your PCN population needs. Community surveys, focus groups with target populations, and analysis of unmet needs and health inequalities.
Patient Participation Group Support
Strengthen your PPG. Recruit new members from underrepresented groups, facilitate effective meetings, train PPG members, and demonstrate impact to CQC.
Community Engagement
Reach residents where they are. Community events, outreach at schools and workplaces, partnership with voluntary organisations, culturally appropriate engagement.
Health Inequalities Work
Target populations experiencing health inequalities. Work with refugee communities, people experiencing homelessness, learning disability groups, Gypsy and Traveller communities.
Service Development PPIE
Patient input on new PCN services. Test service models, co-design delivery approaches, and gather feedback on pilot services before wider rollout.
Patient Surveys & Feedback
Design and distribute patient surveys across your PCN population. Online and paper options. Multi-language where needed. Analysis and reporting for ICB submissions.
Digital Services Testing
Test online appointment booking, patient portals, websites, and digital tools with your actual patients - including elderly and digitally excluded populations.
Primary Care Access Improvement
Patient insight on access barriers, appointment systems, telephone triage, and extended hours. Understand why patients aren't accessing care and test solutions.
Understanding PCN requirements
We understand PCN structures, DES requirements, and ICB expectations. Our PPIE fits how PCNs actually work.
PCN budget realities
We know PCN budgets are tight. Our packages are designed for primary care budgets. Costs shared across member practices. Flexible scoping to fit available funding.
Clinical director time pressures
We don't need hours of your time. Quick kick-off call, we handle recruitment and facilitation, you review findings. We make PPIE easy for busy clinical teams.
Reach your whole population
Not just the retired people who attend daytime PPG meetings. We reach working age adults, parents, shift workers, minority ethnic communities, people who've never engaged before.
Evidence for ICB requirements
Clear documentation of patient involvement for DES submissions, service development plans, and ICB reporting. We know what ICBs expect to see.
Work across member practices
We can engage patients from all member practices, not just one surgery. PCN-wide consultation or practice-specific insight - whatever you need.
Community partnership approach
We work with local voluntary organisations, community centres, faith groups, and schools to reach your population. Especially important for health inequalities work.
Rapid turnarounds when needed
We know PCN deadlines come fast. Need patient input for a bid in 3 weeks? We can deliver rapid consultations that still meet quality standards.
Accessible formats
We travel to where your registered population actually is. Sessions in GP waiting rooms, local community centres, mosques, libraries, community pharmacies, and people's own homes. We never assume participants can or will come to a dedicated research venue - that assumption is how research ends up hearing only from the people who have the time, mobility, and confidence to show up. Evening and weekend sessions, multi-language materials, plain English, BSL interpretation available.
What PCN PPIE looks like in practice
Illustrative examples of the kind of patient involvement work that helps PCNs deliver better care and meet commissioner expectations
Health inequalities and community outreach
A PCN with a large South Asian population wants to understand unmet needs around diabetes prevention. Community partners - a local mosque and community centre - help facilitate focus groups, in community languages as well as English, to identify barriers to existing services that clinical data had not revealed.
What good looks like: A service redesigned with culturally appropriate materials and accessible timing. Uptake in the target population improving. The ICB recognising it as an example of meaningful health inequalities work.
Refreshing a patient participation group
A GP practice with a longstanding PPG of largely retired patients wants to reach younger, more diverse voices. Targeted recruitment brings in working parents, young adults, and people with long-term conditions who would not typically self-select for PPG involvement.
What good looks like: A PPG that reflects the practice population rather than the most available. Decisions informed by a wider range of lived experience. CQC inspectors with substantive patient engagement evidence to note.
Access and appointment barriers
A PCN wants to understand why patients are attending A&E for issues that primary care should handle. Patient research maps the real barriers - phone wait times, digital exclusion, confusion about which service to use - rather than assuming the answer.
What good looks like: Changes to appointment systems, phone capacity, and triage informed by what patients actually experience. Reduction in avoidable urgent care attendance. Evidence the PCN can use with commissioners.
Social prescribing service design
A new PCN social prescribing service needs patient input on what community support would genuinely help. Community consultation across member practices identifies priorities and tests referral pathways before launch.
What good looks like: A service built around what patients said they needed, not what commissioners assumed. Higher completion rates. Patients who feel the service was designed with them, not just for them.
Who we work with in PCNs
From clinical directors to practice managers, we support primary care teams
PCN PPIE pricing
Affordable PPIE packages designed for PCN budgets. Costs can be shared across member practices.
Rapid Insight
Community Consultation
Quick patient feedback for PCN plans, service development, or ICB submissions. Fast turnaround when you need evidence quickly.
- 4-6 patient contributors
- One focus group or survey round
- Recruitment via GP practices or community
- Key findings summary
- Evidence for ICB submissions
- 2-3 week turnaround
Population Insight
Needs Assessment
Comprehensive understanding of your PCN population needs. Survey, focus groups, and analysis. Perfect for health inequalities work and service planning.
- Population survey (200+ responses)
- 2-3 focus groups with target populations
- Multi-practice recruitment
- Community outreach and partnerships
- Full needs assessment report
- Recommendations for PCN services
- 4-6 week delivery
Ongoing Engagement
Annual Partnership
Year-long patient engagement support. PPG development, quarterly consultations, ongoing community engagement, and ICB reporting.
- PPG recruitment and support
- Quarterly patient consultations
- Community engagement events
- Service development input
- ICB submission support
- Annual impact report
- 12 month partnership
All packages include: Patient payments (aligned with NIHR guidance where applicable), recruitment costs, facilitation, accessible materials, analysis, and clear documentation for ICB and CQC requirements.
Cost sharing: Packages can be split across PCN member practices. For a 5-practice PCN, the £7,000 package works out at £1,400 per practice - often less than one locum session.
PCN budgets: We work with PCN budgets, practice contributions, and ICS funding streams. Flexible payment terms. Happy to provide quotes for ICB or commissioner funding applications.
Common questions
What PPIE are PCNs expected to do?
PCNs are expected to involve their patient population in decisions about services, access, and health priorities. This includes maintaining or supporting Patient Participation Groups, conducting population health needs assessments, and demonstrating community engagement for Enhanced Service requirements and network development plans.
How do you engage hard-to-reach patients for PCN PPIE?
We use outreach through community organisations, in-person engagement at non-clinical settings, translated materials, multilingual facilitation, and flexible session timing to reach working-age adults, carers, and people with language or accessibility barriers, going beyond those who typically respond to practice newsletters.
How much does PCN PPIE cost?
PCN PPIE projects start from £3,500 for focused patient engagement and community insight work. Larger programmes covering population health needs assessments or multi-practice engagement are scoped individually. We are aware of the budget realities PCNs operate within and scope work proportionately.
How quickly can you start PCN PPIE work?
We can typically begin work within one to two weeks of instruction. A focused community engagement or patient consultation project can be completed in three to five weeks. Population health needs assessments and broader programmes take longer, typically six to ten weeks depending on scope and geography.
Can PCN PPIE evidence be used for Enhanced Service requirements?
Yes. We produce documented evidence of patient involvement suitable for Enhanced Service reporting, network development plans, and commissioner review. We advise on what each specific requirement calls for and structure the involvement and documentation accordingly.
Where we work
We are based in West Yorkshire and deliver across the UK. Most of this work runs remotely; when a project calls for being in the room, we travel. See user research in Leeds and Yorkshire, or the full list of locations we cover.
We fully recognise the effort your team invested in recruitment, moderation, and analysis, and we genuinely appreciate the quality of the discussions and reporting.
- Usability problems in an insulin device surfaced before manufacturing locked anything in, with human factors evidence supporting the regulatory submission.
- An NHS patient portal team got a prioritised, evidenced list of adoption barriers, and the highest-leverage fix wasn't the one they expected.
- Patient involvement changed a trial's primary endpoint before the protocol was finalised, cited by the ethics committee as a model for evidencing PPIE.
Trusted PPI and PPIE delivery partner to the NIHR HealthTech Research Centre in Accelerated Surgical Care.
Want to talk it through?
If you are unsure which approach fits, we will help you choose the right method and scope.
Contact usWe usually respond within one working day.
Prefer to talk it through first?
Book a free 20-minute call. No obligation, no sales pitch. We'll tell you honestly whether research is worth it for your decision, and what it would cost.