GP practices have been given a five-day extension for logging achievement against the learning disability DES after a CQRS problem meant practices were unable to submit claims.
The Health and Social Care Information Centre, which runs the CQRS reporting system for QOF and enhanced services, says it has now resolved an issue which meant practices were unable to manually log DES results onto the system.
Practices had expressed concern that they would lose payments when they were unable to log achievement against the disability DES by the 31 July deadline. But the HSCIC has now extended the deadline to Monday next week (5 August).
It told Pulse any achievement logged before then would see payments made by the end of August, while practices could still log achievement after this date, but may not be paid in time.
A spokesperson said: The issue around manual data entry for the learning disabilities enhanced services has been resolved and this has been validated with a number of GP practices who reported the issue. We will continue to monitor this with the supplier.’
‘Practices should declare their achievement payment by 5 August, which will allow Area Teams time to financially approve and ensure payments are received for this enhanced service by the end of August. Practices can declare achievement after this date but may not receive payment by the end of August depending on local arrangements.’
The latest glitch in the new system comes against a range of payment delays and confusion experienced by GP practices since the 1 April handover of commissioning of GP services to NHS England, CCGs and local authorities.
The GPC has been pushing for NHS England to urgently sort out the problems, but negotiator Dr Beth McCarron Nash said managers have not yet been able to tell them when they will be fully resolved.
She said: ‘These problems need to be sorted out, but the problem now appears to be that there is a delay and GPs are left in the middle.
‘We are hearing more and more about these problems caused by the fragmentation after 1 April [and] are pushing NHS England on this issue, but unfortunately we are hearing that many practices are struggling with cash flow as a result and have run into accountancy difficulties. It is just unacceptable for small businesses. How are we meant to provide a service under this stress?’
