Practices will receive £6.50 for every patient they have to review after a bug in the SystmOne IT system saw hundreds of thousands of cardiovascular risk scores estimated incorrectly.
A temporary TPP-QRISK2 patient assessment programme DES will run for eight months, from 28 February to 31 October 2017, to compensate practices for the work entailed in reviewing patients who may have been left off statins when they’re at risk of a heart attack or stroke, or who may have suffered side-effects unneccesarily from taking statins when they did not need to.
Pulse revealed in June that NHS England had identified that 260,000 patients were affected by the bug which had been found in the GP clinical IT system SystmOne’s implementation of the QRISK2 tool .
NHS England estimated that there would be around 100 patients in every SystmOne practice that would need a review, amounting to £650 under the DES, and a significant minority would need a face-to-face consultation or new investigations.
But Pulse understands from NHS England that the latest figure is closer to 300,000 patients affected.
GPs received preliminary lists of patients to review back in May, when Pulse first revealed an error had been unearthed, though the UK’s health technology watchdog said the risk to patients was ‘low’.
NHS England said it would monitor the workload implications entailed by the review process but Pulse revealed in June that ‘half of practices’ had not begun the review process.
The DES specification says that ‘following discussions’ SystmOne’s manufacturer, TPP, ‘have agreed to make a payment in recognition of the work this has caused GP practices.’
This could mean a total bill of £1.95m but the GPC told Pulse it was ‘right and fair’ that practices were compensated for work incurred through no fault of their own.
The DES specification says that practices should work from the lists they were provided since June, which will include patients in non-SystmOne practices who have moved surgery.
Practices should provide an initial assessment for every patient identified based on a correct QRISK score, and where a consultation is required contact patients and ‘offer an appropriate review’.
It adds: ‘On completion of the assessment and any resulting review, the practice can claim £6.50 per affected patient by submitting a claim onto the CQRS payment system.
‘In order to claim payment, component one (review of the patient record) must be completed and a clinical plan communicated to the patient, with claims submitted to NHS England local teams by 31 May 2017. Any claims made after this date will not be paid.’
The last four months of the DES requires practices to conduct any reviews that patients have taken up, start any clinically indicated interventions, and submit a declaration confirming this has been done by 31 October.
Failure to confirm by the deadline ‘will result in remedial action, which may include payments being reclaimed’.
GPC deputy chair Dr Richard Vautrey told Pulse: ‘This is something we have been pushing NHS England to deliver since the problem arose, which left patients anxious and practices with additional work to do through no fault of their own.
‘It’s only right and fair that this additional workload has been compensated for.’
An NHS England spokesperson said: ‘This settlement is a contribution in recognition of the additional work carried out by GP practices as a result of the historic issues with the QRISK2 calculator.’
Pulse approached TPP for a comment but it had not responded at time of publication.
