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GPs face annual £20k bill for quality accounts
09 Feb 10
GP practices face being landed with an annual bill of more than £20,000 for drawing up new reports demonstrating the quality of their services, Pulse can reveal.
The Government has approved plans to make every practice produce so-called quality accounts to be published on the NHS Choices website, in an effort to increase patient choice.
The scheme is set to go live across all practices in April 2011, but documents reveal the price tag of producing the data.
Providing information on areas such as patient safety, experience and outcomes data could be huge, with the annual cost to providers estimated by the Department of Health at between £14,000 to £22,000.
Some respondents to a consultation on the scheme, which ended last week, claim the eventual cost could even be even higher, with the DH’s own impact assessment warning money and resources could be diverted from patient care.
‘Many respondents commented this would be a large burden for small providers,’ admits the DH’s response to the consultation.
However, it added: ‘There are clearly benefits to the public of increased patient choice and provider accountability. Quality accounts will improve the quality of patient care and those benefits outweigh the costs.’
The DH claims the majority of respondents were in favour of the requirement for all providers to produce quality accounts, although only 60 out of 170 respondents were in favour, with seven opposed but many unsure.
Pulse has previously revealed that under the plans, originally proposed by Lord Darzi, PCTs will be able to withhold pay from GPs if they cannot demonstrate the quality of their services.
But a DH impact assessment warned: ‘Producing quality accounts places additional burdens on NHS providers, consuming resources for patient care.’
In its consultation response, the BMA gave a guarded welcome to the plan for quality accounts, but warned they could be used to provide unfair comparisons between different types of practices, and could be ‘skewed’ by the media to attack GP performance.
Readers' comments
What happens if we don't do it? Would have to lose a lot of patients to cover 20 grand.
Government money would be better spent in providing more district nurses, chiropodists, nurses on the ward, cleaning hospitals properly and not insisting on political targets which are counter to the practice of caring, competent general practice.
Please don't tell me the BMA have lost their teeth like the BDA has already - 'the BMA gave a guarded welcome'. This is exactly the response dentists are getting just before they get shafted.
However, it added: ‘There are clearly benefits to the public of increased patient choice and provider accountability. Quality accounts will improve the quality of patient care and those benefits outweigh the costs.’ And the evidence for this statement is to be found in which peer-reviewed journal?! So causing practices to make staff redundant to meet the cost of the report does not improve the quality of the service, it isn't going to make a doctor perform better or make it easier to access the service and how many people are going to make use or sense of these expensive ideologically driven reports?
Does not sound like yet another meaningless idea for wasting NHS or even our money on a dubious thing simply to make political capital out of it?
We used to be paid for doing what GPs do. Now we are going to be charged for proving we do what GPs do. Our patients are not daft (unlike the DoH clowns) and already know whether or not they are getting a good service. Vic Bradbury
No, it's a brilliant idea! Patients will be able to read the quality report (all 15 pages of it) and wonder why it is so different from their own experience. There will be a mass movement of patients to GMS practices with the best PR machine and everyone will be happy. The two-year rule applies: the pigeons will come home to roost (sharply increased A&E attendance, long-term conditions not be cared for, many disappearing as shareholder profits) but by then the current Health Secretary will have moved on. http://minney.org/two-year-rule