A number of GP practices could be eligible for financial support for MPIG withdrawal after NHS England managers agreed to meet with GPs to review the methodology that has been used to estimate practices’ annual funding loss.
Pulse understands that NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens met with members of the Jubilee Street practice in Tower Hamlets on Wednesday morning after they raised concerns that the extent of practice’s funding losses was incorrectly calculated.
In September, NHS England agreed to grant a funding reprieve to the 15 practices most acutely affected by the withdrawal of the minimum practice income guarantee payment, all of whom are set to lose more than £3 per patient, which it calculated through its own formula.
But Jubilee Street have collated and attempted to calculate the losses of practices in Tower Hamlets with their own methodology, and they believe that as much as 75% of a practice’s lost income could be neglected by the NHS England method.
Jubilee Street practice manager Virginia Patania told Pulse: ‘We had a meeting with Simon Stevens yesterday morning, which lasted several hours and potentially leads to some quite significant outcomes.’
She added: ‘There is a commitment from them to meet with us, and review the numbers again with us, based on the numbers we presented to them.’
Ms Patania said that she couldn’t disclose details, but explained that they believe the calculation used by NHS England neglects the cumulative impact of practices’ year-on-year losses by only calculating the annual loss based on an average of losses in year seven – the final year of MPIG withdrawal.
She told Pulse: ‘NHS England’s methodology doesn’t reflect our actual losses; I’m not sure why this is the case, or why they chose to do it in a very different way. But it definitely is in our disfavour by about 75%, it knocks out about three quarters of the losses using their methodology, rather than ours.’
NHS England were approached for comment but had not responded at time of publication
