Exclusive NHS England has scrapped its plans to award GP APMS contracts lasting 20 years to digital-first providers, Pulse has learnt.
The commissioner had set in motion a programme in 2020 to award the contracts in 27 CCGs across the country, in a bid to ‘create new opportunities’ for providers in ‘areas of greatest need’.
A document seen by Pulse at the time said that the ‘aim’ was to implement ‘longer-term’ standard APMS contracts of up to 20 years ‘to enable providers to deliver sustainable positive outcomes for populations’ in under-doctored areas.
The programme was set to be live by 1 April 2021, but GP leaders warned the move could ‘destabilise’ practices, leading to closures.
Now NHS England has told Pulse that it has decided to scrap the programme but refused to comment on the reasons why.
It said that ICBs have powers to decide to award APMS contracts and that since 2020 ‘almost 800 GPs’ have moved to under-doctored areas.
An NHS spokesperson told Pulse: ‘Integrated care boards now have the powers to decide whether to implement APMS contracts as part of their delegated commissioning responsibilities and since 2020 the NHS has significantly boosted the number of staff working in general practice with almost 800 GPs moving to under doctored areas, in addition to tens of thousands of staff being recruited through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme.’
In November last year, LMC leaders voted to abolish APMS contracts as an option for general practice, and for all new contracts to be GMS.
During their conference, they also demanded that ‘no funding over and above standard GMS should be provided to commercial organisations wishing to run NHS general practice contracts in England’.
The conference noted ‘recent announcements regarding private providers of NHS general practices withdrawing from their contracts’.
It comes as digital-first healthcare company Babylon recently exited the UK market amid a lack of profitability.
Its GP at Hand arm, an online NHS GP provider which served around 100,000 patients in London, was set up in 2017, via a partnership with a Hammersmith GP practice.
Following financial trouble over the last year, Babylon’s clinical services business was sold solvently to eMed Digital Healthcare at the start of September, and the company is now called eMed UK.
And in October, an ICB decided to re-tender an APMS contract formerly run by US company Operose Health, following concerns around overuse of non-GP staff.
UK-based HCRG Care Group – formerly known as Virgin Care – has since agreed to buy Operose Health, which ran nearly 60 NHS GP practices across the UK.
Operose had also cited a lack of profitability as its reason to sell the business.
