Top headlines
Annual hikes in GP indemnity fees to be reimbursed from April 2017
GP voluntary contract will link funding to reducing admissions
£16m fund for vulnerable practices released this week
New £30m development programme ‘will free up 10% of GP time’
14:30 One in three women struggling to conceive through IVF will still go on to become mothers, a new study has found.
The Daily Telegraph reports that scientists at Greenwich NHS Trust, Imperial College and King’s College London followed up 403 couples six years after they had undergone fertility treatment.
The researchers found that 96% of the couples had failed to conceive and believed that they could never have children but three in 10 became pregnant naturally within the coming years.
Lead author Dr Samuel Marcus, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at, Queen Elizabeth Hospital in London, said: ’Regardless of the outcome of fertility treatments – whether the patients conceived or not – there is about a 30 per cent likelihood of conceiving over a six-year period.’
9:30 The main story this morning is the reaction to the series of announcements around the GP Forward View.
The BMA has welcomed the announcement, but has said the £16m resilience fund must learn the lessons from its predecessor, which it said was ’riddled with delay and bureaucracy’.
Dr Krishna Kasaraneni, chair of the GPC’s education, training and workforce committee, said: ‘This new resilience fund does significantly expand the resources available to struggling practices and it appears to have learnt some of the lessons from last year’s failed vulnerable practice scheme, which was riddled with delay and bureaucracy.
‘This year a major BMA survey found that more than 300 practices across England believed they were no longer financially viable because of a combination of declining resources, rising patient demand and staff shortages. We face the serious prospect of whole areas of the country being left without local GP services to provide care to their communities.
‘It is encouraging that the Government is finally showing signs of recognising the immense pressures facing GP practices, which has left many on the brink of closure.’
Local area teams will receive the funding this week to offer practices at risk of closure access to support with management, staffing (for example skill mix) and IT.
