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GPs forced to manually enter achievement into CQRS until April

GP practices will have to manually upload their achievement to be paid for providing a raft of immunisations and directed enhanced services until next April, after NHS bosses admitted the IT system developed to extract the data is not able to cope.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) emailed practices last week apologising that the Calculating Quality Reporting Service (CQRS) needed more time to ‘successfully deliver the QOF 2013/14 extractions’, forcing practices to manually submit data for a raft of new immunisation programmes.

The new manual uploads that will continue until next April include the childhood flu vaccination programme, the shingles campaign in the elderly and routine pneumococcal vaccinations. This is in addition to the current manual uploading of the learning disabilities health check DES and the vaccination campaigns for rotavirus and MMR.

Practices will not have to manually enter data for QOF 2013/14 as the CQRS extraction service will support this process. 

The CQRS system was meant, according to HSCIC, to save GP practices time ‘through the automation of recording, checking, submitting and approving achievement for the quality services it supports’, but LMC leaders have said it has added to the ‘borderline chaos’ around practice payments. This latest development comes after a range of payment delays and confusion experienced by GP practices since the 1 April handover from PCTs.

In August, GP practices were given a five-day extension for logging achievement against the learning disability DES after a CQRS problem meant practices were unable to submit claims.

A letter sent to all GPs by the HSCIC said: ‘We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience the continued need for manual data entry may cause to GP practices. This decision has been made to provide more time to successfully deliver the QOF 2013/14 extractions.’

‘To help support GP practices, CQRS has provided additional guides available on the CQRS website on how to manually enter data. We will also increase the CQRS service desk provision to help with any queries practices may have.’

Dr Brian Balmer, secretary for North and South Essex LMC and a GPC member, told Pulse that the issue with CQRS was ‘one of the many things impacting on general practice that is making it borderline chaos in terms of general practice payments at the moment’.

‘We told them that it was impossible to do everything in the timeframe proposed but they went ahead anyway and I think that NHS England is now really struggling,’ he said, adding that practice managers were ‘at their wits’ end’.

Russell Vine, chair of the Practice Management Network, said the problems with CQRS were contributing to there being ‘a lot of tired, depressed practice managers out there.’

Pulse revealed yesterday that GPs face a potential recruitment ‘timebomb’ to replace practice managers leaving the profession due to stress, with reports of a 12% increase in vacancies since January.

Which activities have to be manually uploaded?

  • Learning disabilities health check scheme
  • Rotavirus (routine childhood immunisation)
  • Measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) catch-up
  • Childhood seasonal influenza vaccination programme
  • Routine pneumococcal
  • Routine shingles
  • Shingles catch-up (aged 79)

Source: Health and Social Care Information Centre

 

 


          

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