The Government has announced that every GP practice will have commissioning responsibility written into its contract by April 2013, as part of a seismic shift of power towards GPs.
Speaking at the launch of Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS, the coalition Government's White Paper on its radical reforms, health secretary Andrew Lansley also revealed that local consortia will be handed the power to clamp down on GPs who fail to respond to the challenge.
He also confirmed plans to scrap PCTs and SHAs by April 2013/14, to be replaced with an NHS board that will directly fund GP commissioning consortia.
The Government's blueprint for its NHS reforms lays out its plans to overhaul the NHS through a series of flagship policies, including:
* Abolishing practice boundaries
* Enabling patients to choose named consultants
* Scrapping PCTs and SHAs
* Offering patients the choice of any provider
* Establishing a powerful new consumer group called Healthwatch, whose role will include replacing the patient survey
* Devolving power and responsibility for commissioning to GPs
* A much wider use of Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROMS)
* As Pulse revealed, a major reorganisation of the national programme for IT, with patients given far more control over access to their patient records
* A new outcomes framework
* A new commissioning framework for GP consortia, which will create ‘powerful incentives' for GPs.
What does GP-led commissioning mean for you?Attend the NAPC Conference on 20 and 21 October in Birmingham for an outline and post-election analysis of the new coalition Government's key health policies, with stimulating expert debates on key issues facing primary care over the next five years.
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