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GP payment system to be reformed to end ‘unacceptable’ burden on practice time

NHS England will crack down on the long-running payment chaos that has heaped workload on practices in recent years and introduce a simplified payment system to reduce time wasted ‘chasing payments’.

The General Practice Forward View, released yesterday, states: ’We are also taking action to simplify the general practice payment system. It is unacceptable for hard-pressed practices to have to waste time chasing or reconciling payments.’

It also says that new standards will be introduced following a ‘review of payment processes and systems’, which will see NHS England instructing payment providers to:

  • Improve ‘the consistency and accuracy of payments’.
  • increase ‘the transparency and availability of information to support [payments]’.
  • look at implementing a ‘single payment vehicle as a single view with an itemised bank statement like reconciliation of claims and payments’.

Pulse has reported how practice managers and partners have been overwhelmed by payment issues in the wake of the Health and Social Care Act.

Thousands of pounds worth of QOF and enhanced service payments have delayed by IT systems such as the Calculating Quality Reporting System, which were intended to save time. 

NHS England will also introduce a new ‘failsafe’ to allow practices to enter activity data manually in the event of problems with CQRS or the automated GP data extraction service, which is designed to ’ensure practices’ cash flow is maintained’.

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