NHS England has announced £20m of new funding for a new weight management GP enhanced service.
Under the proposals, practices would be encouraged to ‘develop a supportive environment’ to engage with obese patients about their weight and be paid to refer people to weight management services, such as the new NHS Digital Weight Management Service.
In a letter to GPs today, NHS England said it was offering practices the voluntary opportunity to sign up to the scheme which is one of two new enhanced services from July backed by £50m of additional funding for 2021/22.
The second is a £30m for an enhanced service for GPs to treat patients with long Covid, as reported by Pulse earlier this week.
The two new voluntary enhanced services that will start on 1 July have been chosen as priority areas in the recovery from the pandemic, it said.
Setting out the detail, NHS England said that GP identification of people with obesity – defined as a BMI over 30 or higher than 27.5 for those of Black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups – had fallen during the pandemic.
The scheme will help practices put in place a proactive approach for identifying obesity which is ‘fit for purpose’ in a world of virtual consultations and which allows patients to actively update their own records, it said.
Practices that sign up will be paid £11.50 per patient living with obesity who is referred to eligible weight management services.
From July the NHS Digital Weight Management Service should become the default for obese patients with hypertension and or diabetes and will have capacity for up to 270,000 patients in this financial year.
GPs can also refer to local authority funded tier 2 weight management services, the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme or tier 3 or 4 services.
It does not need to happen within standalone consultations but for many practices will be done opportunistically as part of other patient contact, the letter said.
Discussions around introducing an enhanced service on weight management had already been mooted when the Government announced £70m for tackling obesity back in March.
The Government’s obesity strategy, published last July, expressed a wish for obesity indicators to be added to the QOF this year.
Further temporary funding will also be provided to support PCN clinical directors for July to September, extending the £32.5m already allocated for April to June for the Covid-19 response, the letter said.
And NHS England reiterated previously confirmation that no new PCN services or further Investment and Impact fund indicators will be introduced until 1 October at the earliest.
READERS' COMMENTS [5]
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Start, by banning all ”fat faced” politicians from our screens——including Boris Johnson—–and all T.V. chefs——Stop people ”eating out”——shame the ”fat pigs” by putting their photos up in the surgery—–you need no crazy expensive schemes
JGM….I am not a Boris fan, and have been known to make the occasional “fattist ” remark – but honestly – WTF?! Are you honestly a primary care clinician – or the editor of the wail?
Chris GP——-I’ve thrown away my ”eat out to help out voucher”.——-because there is an obesity epidemic sweeping Britain
never mind “eat out to help out”
i say “get out to help out”
if we ALL stuck to our guns and declined all unpaid work (due to “pressure of work” obviously – we’re not being bolshy !), then i suspect things would rapidly change.
go to work, normal hours, then go home. no silly “ganfyd” letters, no phone calls to hospital to chase up appointments (give the patients the hospital managers/secretaries number – let them have the grief), no following up test done in the hospital, etc etc etc.
turn down all des and other badly paid work,
when the clever, salaried, hospital dr phones to have it out with you – “i’m very sorry, but he’s with a patient, if you give me your direct number, i’ll ask him to phone you when he’s free”.
send ALL med3 requests generated by the hospital back to them – tony blair issued an edict to hospitals to provide med3’s “for the expected time off work” way back in the early noughties, yet they still send patients home without one. etc etc etc
it wouldn’t take long for the wheel to turn.
ok, we might get a bit of bad press, but that would soon pass. if you ask your solicitor to type up a quick note to confirm your identity, does he/she do it for free ? didn’t think so – why should we ? (i ask the patient who doesn’t want to pay for a ganfyd letter “why should I pay MY secretary to type out YOUR letter ?), i’ve yet to get a sensible answer.
take a pay cut, in order to have an extra day off. you can make up the dosh by doing out-of-hours if you really feel compelled to pay more tax.
i now live in locumland, and work two days a week, often finishing at 6.30. it doesn’t matter how much shit they chuck at me, tomorrow i’m not working. occasionally i do a third day, but that is for good colleagues, and i’m still in control.
when covid eventually eases off, there will be a wave of retirements. those that are left will then have to do something, or the whole system really will collapse.
The devil is always in the detail. (typical of the bureaucratic system we have) Problem is the more detail (tick boxes) there is, the more you miss the bigger picture.
Firstly, Stop medicalising obesity.
Secondly, establish and deal with underlying causes.
Any amount of money, obesity DES’s or specialist services will not and cannot deal with the end result.