22. Dr Amanda Doyle

Dr Amanda Doyle may have been the midwife to a major revolution in the way that GP services are funded.

Nominated for being a ‘great voice for GP commissioners’, Dr Doyle was responsible for helping write the guidelines for CCGs taking on co-commissioning of primary care in England this year.

In the guidelines, the Blackpool GP gave them carte blanche to make massive changes to the GP contract, allowing CCG leaders to amalgamate budgets for the QOF and directed enhanced services, and design their own local alternatives.

And it proved hugely popular, with more than 70% of CCGs signing up from April.

While not many have flexed their co-commissioning muscles yet, the move has put the wind up the GPC which has warned of the ‘chaotic upheaval’ that practices may face if they move away from the national contract.

But this warning has not put off some. NHS Aylesbury Vale CCG has already dropped elements of QOF and binned the unplanned admissions DES that it said was ‘achieving very little’.

Other areas have reworked QOF payments to be more localised and one CCG even mooted moving practices into a fully salaried GP service.

Dr Doyle tells Pulse that preparing the national guidance was ‘a real challenge’, but she was pleased at the reaction to them.

Elsewhere, in her role as chair of NHS Blackpool CCG, she also won funding for a ‘multispecialty community provider’ on the Fylde Coast, which will look after 1,000 frail and elderly patients. This, she says, ‘has really given us a boost in being able to speed up and scale up our local out-of-hospital services’.

However, she has also received a slap on the wrist from healthcare regulator Monitor after it found that NHS Blackpool CCG and NHS Fylde and Wyre CCG in Lancashire had not ensured that GPs were offering patients adequate choice of provider for their first outpatient appointment, following a complaint by private healthcare company Spire.