Commissioners are being asked to identify the 20% of practices locally with the lowest level of face-to-face GP appointments, as well as the 20% with the highest A&E attendances. The practices support to ‘improve’, and this includes smaller practices partnering with larger practices. Where practices do not ‘engage with the support’, they may face contractual action.
The £250m being provided by the NHS is predicated on reaching pre-pandemic levels of activity by November. Those who don’t reach these won’t get any funds.
General practice is expected to increase the total volume of appointment levels.
Patients are to receive texts straight after finishing their consultation to be asked about their levels of satisfaction. The investment and impact fund will incentivise patient satisfaction, and the scale of the incentives ‘will be increased significantly in 2023/24 within the planned GP contract envelope’.
NHS Digital is to publish waiting time data on a practice-by-practice level.
The funding is to be used to expand the locum pool, hire retired geriatricians, extra admin staff and support the increased use of urgent care centres.
There are some measures to reduce bureaucracy, including a reduced appraisals process, and enabling more professionals to issue fit notes and DVLA certification. There will be a reform of the transfer of data from secondary care. There are no plans to protect QOF income, however.
The plans claim that the full-time equivalent GP workforce has increased by 1,200 – although these estimates has been questioned.
There will be a campaign launched to counter abuse of GPs and their staff alongside other measures.
Pharmacists joining PCNs will automatically be trained to prescribe.
UKHCA published updated guidance on infection control, which reduced social distancing measures from 2m to 1m in GP practices – as trailed yesterday.
NHS England is to enable cloud-based telephony across the country.
The transfer of local extended access services to PCNs will now be postponed until October 2022.
Please note, this will be continuously updated. Please keep an eye on pulsetoday.co.uk throughout the day
READERS' COMMENTS [4]
Please note, only GPs are permitted to add comments to articles
Headlines have become deadlines and dreadlines.
Javid and Kanani have just shot the NHS in the head – just before what threatens to be the worst winter pressures on record.
It’s 250m GBP to Systems, not to practices, for winter resilience, as a one-off. It is around 0.14% of the NHS budget. It doesn’t compare well with the no-strings-or-oversight 400m a month given to private hospitals over the pandemic.
In the real world, there are fewer and fewer GPs seeing more and more patients. All that investment in PCNS has not delivered a single doctor, nurse, manager or receptionist – because NHSE micromanagement has meant practices have had to invest in a specified range of (largely unproductive) staff.
GPs are now told to see a greater proportion of people remotely. Then to see a greater proportion of people F2F. At the same time.
The rest of the paper is a mix of rehashed old promises (never delivered on); statistics that are either imaginary or just lies; and threats of punitive action.
That NHSE feel empowered to do this speaks volumes about the contempt in which they hold the BMA and GPC,
This is likely to push many GPs over the edge or into retirement, and lead to industrial action from those who remain in situ. I would certainly support industrial action at this point – what have we got to lose?
It may lead to GPs doing what the dentists did – remind me how that worked out?
The rest of the system needs to prepare for GPs restricting access to ‘reasonable levels’ based on the resource received and staff capacity, to ensure safety. We can’t keep working harder to rescue a system in which it is getting increasingly difficult to work safely, and which shows no sign of recognising or acknowledging the source fo the real problems – the politicians and senior NHS management.
Every 6% shift from General Practice to urgent Care (around 22m appointments based on current figures) means Systems will have to roughly double the number of urgent care appointments available. Good luck with that one!
(DOI I am a GP and LMC Officer, and I have been absolutely inundated with emails from colleagues today, who are either furious, or despondent, or both)
I’m concerned that my mind is playing tricks on me, is it a false memory or did the government come up with the idea to move to remote consultations?
I wonder whether we could all signal our disgust with this hastily conceived and ill thought out plan by coming to work in our pyjamas and dressing gowns as we are obviously not expected to go home anymore .