A CCG plans to save £35 million by 2020/21 through GP ‘collaborative working’, according to its ‘sustainability and transformation plan’.
NHS Salford CCG says in its sustaintability and transformation plan (STP) savings include £7.6 million from emergency care admissions, £5 million from a reduction in planned hospital admissions and £1 million from a reduction in admissions to care homes.
The plan also includes a ‘medicines optimisation’ scheme which will see a £2.5 million saving in cost increases from tackling primary care prescribing.
However, local leaders said there is little detail around what ‘collaborative working’ means.
NHS bosses told all areas in December last year to submit the STPs outlining how they will ensure health services, including primary care, are ‘sustainable’. All plans have to be submitted in June, but NHS Salford CCG is one of the first to make theirs public as it is part of the wider Greater Manchester plan.
A spokesman for NHS Salford CCG said that its approach was to invest in community-based care and cost savings would come from hospital-based care but added that it had not yet been decided whether GPs in the area would receive extra funding under the new plans.
The spokesman said: ‘Whether this means more money for GPs is under discussion.’
GPC lead Dr Richard Vautrey said: ‘GPs will be concerned that history will just repeat itself and so called efficiency savings in secondary care will simply be made by passing the work to general practice without the funding to make that sustainable.
’This pass the parcel game where the music always stops with the workload in the lap of GPs has led to the current crisis in general practice and is reflected in the anger we’ve seen expressed at the LMC conference.’
Local GPs told Pulse that the plan did not make It clear exactly what ‘collaborative working’ meant.
Former Salford LMC lead Dr Iain Maclean told Pulse: ‘I suspect that “collaborative working” means different things to different people, depending upon their agenda,’
