Rebecca Fisher Senior Policy Fellow
Becks joined the Health Foundation in September 2016, and is now a Senior Policy Fellow.
She leads policy work on primary care and general practice, and has a particular interest in equity in primary care provision.
Becks is a practicing doctor, and works two days a week as a GP in an area of urban high deprivation.
Prior to taking up her policy role at the Foundation, Becks spent a year as a National Medical Directors Clinical Fellow to Sir Bruce Keogh. She completed her GP training and an Academic Clinical Fellowship in Oxford, where her research focussed on effective delivery of out of hours primary care. Alongside these roles, Becks was a teaching Fellow at Green Templeton College, and subsequently co-founded Next Generation GP – now a national leadership programme for early career GPs.
Becks did her medical training at the University of Cambridge, graduating with the Roger Morris prize for medicine and surgery.
For media enquiries please contact the media office.
Fisher R. ‘Levelling up’ general practice in England: What should government prioritise? The Health Foundation, May 2021.
Fisher R, Smith J, Sidhu M, Parkinson S, Alderwick H. NHS reform. Five key questions about the future of primary care networks in England. The Health Foundation, January 2021.
Gopfert A, Deeny SR, Fisher R, Stafford M. Primary care consultation length by deprivation and multimorbidity in England: an observational study using electronic patient records. British Journal of General Practice, 14 December 2020, bjgp20X714029. DOI: 10.3399/bjgp20X714029*
Hodgson K, Stafford M, Fisher R, Docherty M, Deeny S. Inequalities in health care for people with depressions and/or anxiety. The Health Foundation, November 2020.
Fisher R, Dunn P, Asaria M, Thorlby R. Level or not? Comparing general practice in areas of high and low socioeconomic deprivation in England. The Health Foundation, September 2020
Fisher R, Asaria M. How might COVID-19 affect the number of GPs available to see patients in England? The Health Foundation, August 2020
Fisher R, Turton C, Gerschlick B, Alderwick H, Thorlby R. Feeling the strain, the Commonwealth Fund International Survey of General Practitioners, 2019. The Health Foundation, March 2020.
Fisher R, Thorlby R, Alderwick H. Understanding Primary Care Networks: context benefits and risks. The Health Foundation, July 2019.
Fisher R, Richards M, Thorlby R, Turton C. Unfinished business: An assessment of the national approach to improving cancer services in England 1995–2015. The Health Foundation, November 2018
Stafford M, Steventon A, Thorlby R, Fisher R, Turton C, Deeny S. Understanding the health care needs of people with multiple health conditions. The Health Foundation, November 2018
Friebel R, Fisher R, Deeny SR, Gardner T, Molloy A, Steventon A. The implications of high bed occupancy rates on readmission rates in England: A longitudinal study. Health Policy. 2019 Aug;123(8):765-772. doi: 10.1016/j.healthpol.2019.06.006. Epub 2019 Jun 22. PMID: 31262535.*
Kathryn Dreyer; Adam Steventon; Rebecca Fisher; Sarah Deeny. The impact of living alone on health care utilisation in older adults: a cross-sectional study of electronic health records from a London General Practice. BMC Geriatrics, Dec 2018*
Brettell R, Fisher R, Hunt H, et al. What proportion of patients at the end of life contact out-of-hours primary care? A data linkage study in Oxfordshire BMJOpen 2018;8:e020244. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2017-020244*
Latest articles
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Projections: General practice workforce in England
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Understanding activity in general practice: what can the data tell us?
The policy team explores current trends and limitations in general practice activity data.
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The NHS Long Term Plan and COVID-19
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Chart
How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted primary care?
Three charts exploring regional trends in the number of primary care appointments, trends in the...
Long read
'Levelling up' general practice in England
General practice has a key role to play in reducing health inequalities and should be included in...
Chart
Use of primary care during the COVID-19 pandemic: May 2021 update
There have been dramatic shifts in primary care activities and outcomes in response to the COVID-19...
Long read
NHS reform
Given plans for significant changes to NHS structures and legislation, our long read sets out five...
Blog
Multimorbidity, deprivation and consultation length
Dr Becks Fisher, a GP in Oxford and Senior Policy Fellow at the Health Foundation, reflects on the...
Long read
Inequalities in health care for people with depression and/or anxiety
People with depression and/or anxiety are more likely to have additional long-term conditions if...
Chart
Who gets in?
In this short analysis our Policy team use data from the annual GP patient survey to explore access...
Briefing
Level or not?
Our briefing analyses how general practice compares in areas of high and low socioeconomic...
Chart
Use of primary care during the COVID-19 pandemic
There have been dramatic shifts in primary care activities and outcomes in response to the COVID-19...
Long read
How might COVID-19 affect the number of GPs available to see patients in England?
COVID-19 may affect the number of GPs able to consult with patients face-to-face. We explore this...
Blog
Building castles on sand: reforming primary care
Rebecca Fisher looks at what the 2019 Commonwealth Fund Survey tells us about primary care reform in...
Analysis
Feeling the strain
An analysis of the 2019 Commonwealth Fund survey data and what it says about general practice in the...
Blog
Social inequalities and primary care networks: realising the potential through advancing data and analytics
Better data linkage across primary care and other community-based services has the potential to help...
Blog
Primary care networks: lifeboats launched on stormy seas
Primary care networks (PCNs) went live on 1 July 2019. Despite their potential to improve primary...
Briefing
Understanding primary care networks
This briefing helps to explain what the implementation of primary care networks (PCNs) will mean for...
Blog
Primary care networks and the deprivation challenge
The newly emerging PCNs provide an opportunity to tackle health inequalities in England but they...
Blog
A worrying cycle of pressure for GPs in deprived areas
Without urgent policy action, GP shortages will get worse.
Blog
Winter pressures in practice
How has this winter been for GPs and their patients in England? Dr Becks Fisher describes the...
Blog
The diagnosis you fear to make and fear to miss
A GP’s perspective on the tough decisions she faces diagnosing cancer.
Research report
Unfinished business
What has changed in cancer care in England over the past two decades? What has worked well, or less...
Blog
General practice and the multiple conditions challenge
In this blog, GP Rebecca Fisher explores the challenges in helping patients to manage multiple...
Briefing
Understanding the health care needs of people with multiple health conditions
As the number of people with multiple health conditions grows, meeting their needs will be one of...
Blog
Work trouble: Working 9-5 doesn’t always make good living…
In Dr Fisher’s consultation room, work and its relationship with physical and mental health is...
Blog
Data sharing to improve care
As sharing data across organisations becomes the norm in the NHS, will general practice embrace its...
Briefing
Sharing to improve
This briefing introduces approaches to collaborative data sharing that enable improvement in the...
Blog
Winter pressures data: Where are the blind spots?
Dr Rebecca Fisher, a GP and Policy Fellow at the Health Foundation, considers what the data can’t...
Blog
NHS winter pressures: How well prepared is the NHS in England?
In our first blog looking at winter pressures, we look at the measures taken beyond hospitals to...
Blog
Collaborating for care: Harnessing the power of data sharing across GP practices
If groups of practices collaborate to pool data centrally, analyse and compare it, and then share...
Blog
Does reforming the Act mean action on mental health?
It should have come as no surprise that the start of Mental Health Awareness Week heralded a major...
Briefing
The social care funding gap: implications for local health care reform
This briefing offers an analysis of the size of the gap in adult social care funding in England – at...
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