Delivering a national programme of anticipatory care in primary care: a qualitative study

Primary prevention often occurs against a background of inequalities in health and health care. Addressing this requires practitioners and systems to acknowledge the contribution of health-related and social determinants and to deal with the lack of interconnectedness between health and social service providers. Recognising this, the Scottish Government has implemented a national programme of anticipatory care targeting individuals aged 45-64 years living in areas of socioeconomic deprivation and at high risk of cardiovascular disease. This programme is called Keep Well.

To explore the issues and tensions underpinning the implementation of a national programme of anticipatory care.

A qualitative study in five Wave 1 Keep Well pilot sites, located in urban areas of Scotland, and involving 79 general practices.

Annual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 74 key stakeholders operating at national government level, local pilot level and within general practices, resulting in 118 interviews. Interview transcripts were analysed using the framework approach.

Four underlying tensions were identified. First, those between a patient-focused general-practice approach versus a population-level health-improvement approach, linking disparate health and social services; secondly, medical approaches versus wider social approaches; thirdly, a population-wide approach versus individual targeting; and finally, reactive versus anticipatory care.

Implementing an anticipatory care programme to address inequalities in cardiovascular disease identified several tensions, which need to be understood and resolved in order to inform the development of such approaches in general practice and to develop systems that reduce the degree of fragmentation across health and social services.