NHS England is expecting appeals from GPs about their recorded achievement against the avoiding unplanned admissions DES because of ongoing computer glitches.
The system has been bedevilled with problems in recent months, on which Pulse has reported extensively, and now NHS England has admitted in an email to practices that it may not be fully equipped to process the data capture scheduled for the end of March either.
In the email, NHS England moved to assure practices that there will be an opportunity to provide extra information if they do not believe that the outcomes reflect their true performance.
Cleveland LMC told GPs about NHS England’s email in a newsletter, which said: ‘NHS England has said that they anticipate some appeal of data on the Calculating Quality Reporting Service and if you believe you have achieved the 2% goal in line with the service level agreement but this is not reflected in the CQRS extraction there will be an opportunity to provide evidence to support this.
It added a warning say that although ’all evidence will be reviewed’ this ’may take a little time to work through’.
GPC deputy chair Dr Richard Vautrey said the problems were increasing GPs’ workload and bringing repeated uncertainty about income levels.
He added: ‘The continued failure to sort out this ongoing IT issue is unacceptable and leaves practices with yet more unnecessary work to do, and uncertainties about the funding that is due to them for the significant work they have done on this service.
’NHS England not only has to resolve the problem but also apologise to practices and tell them how they will compensate for the extra work they are causing.’
The GPC and the Government are discussing whether to scrap the avoiding unplanned admissions DES because of its heavy associated workload.
NHS England has been approached for comment.
