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THE PRESSURE, IN NUMBERS: In July 2026, 63.2 million patients were registered with GP practices, while the number of full-time equivalent GPs stood at just 29,057.
Primary care is managing more patients, more appointments and more routes into care than ever. In July 2026, 63.2 million patients were registered with GP practices, while the number of full-time equivalent GPs stood at 29,057. That is 307 fewer FTE GPs than in September 2015, while the number of patients per FTE GP reached 2,176 – 12.3% higher than in 2015. GP practices also recorded 34.9 million appointments in July, including 6.7 million clinically urgent appointments.
The numbers, at a glance:
Metric | Figure |
Patients registered with GP practices (Jul 2026) | 63.2m |
Full-time equivalent GPs | 29,057 |
Fewer FTE GPs than Sept 2015 | -307 |
Patients per FTE GP | 2,176 |
Increase in patients per GP vs. 2015 | +12.3% |
GP appointments recorded (Jul 2026) | 34.9m |
Clinically urgent appointments | 6.7m |
With demand and workforce pressures moving in different directions, effective primary care management increasingly depends on connected digital systems that can bring patient access, clinical information, appointments, referrals and follow-up into one coordinated environment.
The NHS 10-Year Health Plan sets out three major shifts: hospital to community, sickness to prevention, and analogue to digital. This direction places greater emphasis on neighbourhood-based, multidisciplinary and digitally connected care. For primary care organisations, the technology supporting that model needs to connect people, information and processes across the patient journey.
Cellma is an integrated EHR, PAS and healthcare management platform designed to connect the different activities involved in delivering care.
Rather than treating appointments, patient records, referrals, clinical documentation and reporting as separate functions, Cellma brings them together within a connected digital environment.
For primary care teams, this can mean managing:
This gives primary care management teams a broader operational view while allowing clinicians to work with the information relevant to the patient in front of them.
A patient’s journey rarely ends with a GP consultation.
A patient may move from a GP to a pharmacist, community service, specialist team or another healthcare professional. Each transition creates a need for relevant information to move with the patient.
Cellma is designed to support this connected journey. A typical pathway can involve:
Patient access → Appointment → Assessment → Clinical documentation → Referral → Treatment → Follow-up → Reporting
Each stage can be supported within the Cellma ecosystem.
For example, an appointment can be recorded alongside the patient’s clinical information. A referral can be created and tracked. Clinical notes can be documented digitally. Follow-up activity can remain visible to the appropriate teams.
The result is a more connected foundation for primary care management, rather than a collection of disconnected administrative tasks.
Digital access is now an important part of primary care.
The NHS App provides patients with access to a growing range of digital services, while NHS guidance places increasing emphasis on online journeys and patient-facing services.
CellmaPatientPortal extends this digital approach by supporting functions such as:
✓ Appointment booking
✓ Prescription-related access
✓ Medical history
✓ Patient messaging
✓ Access to relevant health information
✓ Digital requests and communication
RioMed also states that CellmaPatientPortal can integrate with the NHS App, supporting a connected route for patients to access records, book appointments and manage aspects of their care.
For primary care providers, this creates an opportunity to move routine patient interactions into digital channels while keeping those interactions connected to the underlying patient record.
That matters because patient-facing technology should not sit separately from primary care management. The digital front door needs to connect with the systems used by staff behind it.
Primary care does not operate in isolation.
NHS England states that interoperability is the ability for people and systems to work across software and organisational boundaries with minimal human intervention. It also states that new general practice systems must be interoperable.
Cellma is designed around this requirement. Its interoperability approach includes support for:
NHS England identifies FHIR as a key technology for making integration with APIs and services easier, while GP Connect enables authorised users and systems to share and view GP information for direct patient care.
This is important for primary care management because interoperability is not simply an IT feature. It affects how information moves between teams and how much manual work is required to transfer, locate or re-enter information.
Cellma is not limited to storing patient information. It supports the operational processes around that information.
Appointment Management
Cellma provides appointment and scheduling capabilities to help teams manage availability, bookings, clinics and patient attendance. Digital access can also allow patients to interact with services without every request requiring manual intervention from reception teams.
Referral Management
Referrals can be recorded and tracked as part of the patient’s digital journey. Teams can maintain visibility of referral activity, relevant clinical information and follow-up requirements rather than treating each referral as an isolated administrative task.
Clinical Documentation
Cellma supports digital clinical documentation and structured patient records. This provides clinicians with a central place to record relevant information during consultations and across subsequent interactions.
Communication
Cellma supports communication between healthcare teams and patients through integrated digital functions. This can include patient messaging and other communication workflows, helping keep relevant information within the patient’s digital journey.
Reporting and Analytics
Operational visibility is another important part of primary care management. Cellma provides dashboards, reporting and analytics capabilities that can help organisations understand activity across their services. Teams can use information relating to appointments, referrals, patient activity and service performance to support operational planning.
Primary care teams can face several recurring digital and operational challenges.
Challenge | Cellma Approach |
Information sits across different processes—staff may spend time locating information | Bring these functions into a connected healthcare environment |
Administrative work takes time away from care—manual handling and repeated data entry create workload | Digital workflows and automation move tasks into structured digital processes |
Patients expect digital access to services | CellmaPatientPortal with stated NHS App integration capabilities |
Care involves more than one professional across teams | Connect relevant patient information and workflows across the care journey |
Leaders need service visibility into activity and demand | Reporting, dashboards and analytics for service-level visibility |
VENDOR-REPORTED FIGURES: RioMed reports 20% higher efficiency and 15% fewer DNAs for Cellma in primary care use cases. These are vendor-reported figures rather than independent NHS performance measurements.
The future of primary care management is not limited to what happens inside a GP practice.
As care moves closer to communities, patients may interact with several professionals and services within the same broader pathway.
That makes the ability to connect information increasingly important. Cellma can support this model by connecting:
Patients → GPs → Pharmacists → Community Teams → Specialists → Referrals → Follow-ups
The platform can also extend beyond individual practices through its wider healthcare capabilities, supporting organisations that manage multiple specialties and care settings.
This provides a foundation that can grow as services change, rather than requiring every new pathway to operate as a separate digital environment.
Connected healthcare requires more than interoperability. Patient information must also be handled securely.
Cellma incorporates security and governance capabilities including:
✓ Role-based access control
✓ Multi-factor authentication
✓ Audit trails
✓ Data encryption
✓ Security monitoring
✓ Cloud or on-premise deployment options
✓ GDPR-aligned data protection
✓ ISO 27001-aligned security practices
✓ Cyber Essentials Plus
✓ NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT) requirements
These capabilities support the governance requirements that sit alongside modern digital primary care management.
NHS guidance also highlights the importance of secure authentication, access controls, information governance and data protection when connecting systems and sharing patient information.
A digital primary care platform needs to do more than hold electronic records.
It needs to connect the activities surrounding the patient.
That means giving clinicians access to relevant information, helping administrative teams manage appointments and referrals, giving patients appropriate digital access, and giving service leaders visibility through reporting and analytics.
Cellma brings these capabilities together within one healthcare ecosystem.
For organisations planning the next stage of primary care management, the focus is therefore not simply on replacing paper or digitising individual tasks. It is about creating a connected digital foundation that can support patients, professionals and services as care continues to move across traditional organisational boundaries.
Primary care is becoming more connected, multidisciplinary and digitally enabled. The technology supporting it needs to keep pace.
Cellma connects patient records, appointments, referrals, clinical documentation, communication, patient-facing services and reporting within a wider healthcare ecosystem.
With interoperability, digital patient access, workflow support and analytics built into the platform, Cellma provides a connected foundation for modern primary care management.
Less chasing. More visibility. Connected primary care with Cellma.
Ready to Explore Connected Primary Care?
Discover how Cellma can support your organisation’s patient journeys, workflows, interoperability and reporting requirements.
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