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Decommission GPs who do not plan care for long term conditions, says think-tank

The NHS should incentivise practices who provide personalised care planning for patients with long-term conditions, and decommission services who don’t, a think tank has argued.

The King’s Fund report, Delivering better services for people with long-term conditions, argues that GPs should adopt the ‘house of care’ model which involves clinicians and patients working collaboratively to create care personalised care plans with patients which identify their goals and what support they need.

This would spark a move towards a system where the care of patients with long term conditions is more anticipated and planned, and with patients more informed, engaged and capable of self-management, the report said.

NHS England should support this move by ensuring that ‘its incentives reflect the importance of care planning’ and the GP contract is ‘aligned to support this approach’. It should also be ready to ‘decommission poor-quality primary care services’, it said.

This means GPs must abandon traditional ways of thinking where they see themselves as the primary decision-makers and shift to a partnership model involving collaborative decision making, the report said.

It added: ‘Implementing the model requires health care professionals to abandon traditional ways of thinking and behaving, where they see themselves as the primary decision-makers, and instead shifting to a partnership model in which patients play an active part in determining their own care and support needs.’