Patient survey losses to hit almost all GP practices

03 Jun 09

GP leaders predict only a handful will escape without losses, with 15% to lose all funding allocated to the most controversial question, asking if patients can get an appointment more than two days in advance.

Practices’ losses have resulted from a combination of tough new payment thresholds in the QOF and low postal response rates in some areas – and despite patient satisfaction scores apparently increasing compared with last year.

Shortfalls faced by practices are predicted to hugely outweigh those caused by the recent changes to the GP contract.

Pulse can reveal:

•some practices have been hit by losses of up to £25,000

•hundreds of GPs have signalled plans to appeal their results

•a legal row is raging over whether the results can be overturned

•showdown talks have been held between the GPC and the Government.

The developments came as GP leaders furiously denied signing up to the small print of the survey, after suggestions by lawyers that the survey process might be impossible to challenge because it had been agreed through negotiation.

In Greater Manchester, LMC leaders have revealed up to half of GP practices have been told they will lose up to £10,000.

Dr Andrew Mimnagh, chair of Sefton LMC, said losses in his area averaged £6,000 to £9,000 per practice: ‘My own practice’s loss exceeds the maximum loss of any practice in the area from the MPIG recalculation.’

Dr William Delaney, a GP in Worksop, Nottinghamshire, said his practice was set to lose a mammoth £25,000. ‘We have a list size of 34,000,’ he said. ‘We only had responses from 1%.’

Dr Zara Aziz, a GP in Bristol who has worked in both deprived and affluent areas, said there would be a ‘marked difference’ in patient satisfaction scores depending on location, with deprivation meaning both lower response rates and lower satisfaction.

‘A lot of people in deprived areas are not going to score well and never will.’

GPC chair Dr Laurence Buckman said the committee had held talks with ministers to try to resolve the dispute and had issued a template appeal letter to LMCs.

‘If the result does not accurately reflect the access you offer, you should consider appealing,’ he said. ‘Our legal advice is that practices will be able to be successful.’

In Glasgow alone, 170 of 270 practices are to launch appeals against their results, with GPC Scotland saying very few practices would escape the losses entirely.

But the Department of Health appears confident it can withstand any challenge. A spokesperson said: ‘We do not accept the claim the survey scores are inaccurate.’