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Capita hit with financial penalties for support service failures

Capita has already been financially penalised for failing to deliver on contractual standards for GP support services, NHS England has revealed in a letter to the BMA.

NHS England’s national director for transformation and corporate operations, Karen Wheeler, issued an apology for the ‘unacceptable level of performance’ from their contracted supplier in the letter to GPC chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul.

She writes that NHS England has applied ‘financial service credits’ to Capita due to ‘agreed performance targets [being] missed.

However, the letter failed to acknowledge the GPC’s previous demand for financial recompense for practices.

The letter did not state what targets have been missed, and Capita told Pulse that information was ‘commercially confidential’.

The indicators in Capita’s contract include a requirement that ‘all (98.5%) medical records are collected and delivered on time’ defined as within 12 working days of collection from the practice, or submitting GP pension data accurately and on time.

A letter from Dr Nagpaul to Ms Wheeler last month said: ‘NHS England is ultimately responsible for the chaos caused by trying to cut the cost of this essential service for practices by privatising it and we can now all too clearly see the result, with practices picking up the workload and patients suffering as a result.’

Ms Wheeler writes: ‘I absolutely share those concerns. I would like to reiterate the apology I made personally when we met recently for the issues that have persisted across many aspects of PCSE services over recent months, and especially for the impacts this has had on practices at a time when they are already under significant pressure.’

She adds: ‘I do expect you to see significant improvement in all areas over the coming weeks as outlined above.’

A Capita spokesperson said: ‘We fully recognise that the services we provide play a key role in supporting primary care providers and apologise for the level and varied quality of service we have provided across a number of PCSE services.’