METHODS RESEARCH: Identifying Naturally Occurring Communities of Primary Care Providers in the English National Health Service in London

摘要

Primary care networks (PCNs) are a new organizational hierarchy with wide‐ranging responsibilities introduced in the NHS Long Term Plan. The vision is that they represent “natural” communities of primary care practices (PCPs) with boundaries that make sense to practices, other health care providers, and local communities. Our study aims to identify natural communities of PCPs based on patient registration patterns using network analysis methods and unsupervised clustering to create catchments for these communities.