The BMA’s GP Committee has called for a measles vaccination enhanced service to cover currently ‘unresourced’ work associated with the measles outbreak.
In a letter to NHS England, GPC England chair Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer highlighted ‘serious concerns’ around the measles outbreak and the ‘volume of unresourced, unplanned, and additional work’ practices will have to deal with.
There has been a sharp rise in measles cases over the last six weeks, mainly driven by an outbreak in Birmingham, which last month prompted officials to declare a ‘national incident’.
GPs have been asked to deliver a catch-up MMR vaccination programme for children aged between 12 months and five years, and in response to recent outbreaks, NHS England launched a campaign this month for children aged six to 11 who still require the vaccine.
GPs were told to prepare for an increase in enquiries, and NHS England advised healthcare professionals, including GP practice staff, to wear PPE when dealing with suspected measles cases.
In her letter at the end of January, which has also been seen by primary care minister Andrea Leadsom, Dr Bramall-Stainer said GP practices are already seeing increased demand as a result of queries from concerned patients.
The GPC pointed out that there has been no specific funding or support to ICBs to deal with the extra work needed to tackle the measles outbreaks.
Dr Bramall-Stainer called for an ‘NHSE-mandated urgent roll out of time-limited packages of support’ for ICBs to deliver work relating to measles.
The GPC chair suggested this could take the form of an enhanced service which helps practices cover the costs of identifying cohorts of patients, contacting them, inviting them to clinics, as well as set-up and staffing costs.
‘Under current workload pressures, practices do not have the resources to create capacity to undertake this work. There is a real risk of significantly impacting upon day-to-day delivery of patient care,’ Dr Bramall-Stainer said.
Without extra support, the GPC warned that practices will not have the capacity to review their registered lists for unvaccinated cases as this is a ‘serious undertaking’ which will result in ‘significant administrative burden’.
The GP Committee has also reiterated its request for NHS England to lower thresholds for vaccination QOF payments to ‘enable greater coverage’, instead of the ‘current financially punitive approach’.
They argued that the communications from NHS England on measles have shown a ‘lack of accompanying infrastructure, planning and resources’ to help GP practices deliver the necessary work.
An update from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) last week said that in the previous seven days a further 118 laboratory confirmed measles cases had been confirmed in England, which brought the total number of cases confirmed since 1 October 2023 to 465.
On Covid vaccinations, the GPCE has also announced that NHS England agreed to an additional £2.50 payment per vaccination for the spring booster campaign.
This followed negotiation between NHSE and the committee, and will be paid on top of the £7.54 Item of Service (IoS) fee.
Last week, the Government accepted the JCVI’s advice to vaccinate a larger number of children who are immunosuppressed as well as those aged 75 and over and residents in care homes.
The additional £2.50 per vaccination will apply between April and August of this year.
The GPC told its members: ‘Whilst this move is welcome, we retain strong concerns about the future financial viability of the programme, and we again recommend that practices and their partners make a full assessment of whether delivery of the vaccination programme remains viable for them.’
In November, local GP leaders voted in favour of a motion proposing a series of improvements to vaccination fee rates, in light of last year’s confused rollout of the Covid booster programme.
LMCs instructed the GPC to negotiate with NHS England to ‘ensure that IoS payments for Covid for future years are increased to at least 2022/23 levels’, when the fee was £10.06.
The motion also said the GPC should ‘reject any future vaccination programmes that have an IoS payment less than previously agreed’, and that it should ‘strongly advise the profession to decline signing up’ should this happen again.
