Earlier this year, Capita announced a three-year extension to its primary care support services contract with NHS England. Pulse’s recent investigation has analysed the performance of Capita’s service delivery arm Primary Care Support England (PCSE), how it has affected GPs and patient care, and the justification for the extension. As part of this we spoke to GPs about their experience with the organisation. These are their stories.
In 2013, a GP in Wolverhampton became seriously unwell and spent weeks in hospital. He looked into taking ill health retirement at the time, but his pensions forecast showed only £10,000.
‘At the time my cognitive function wasn’t good enough for me to say that is an error, that is wrong – I had no choice but to go back to work. I’d already had 12 months with no financial support,’ he says.
Two years later, the GP looked again at ill health retirement – having only been able to return to work on a limited basis and do just enough to pay the bills. By this time pensions were being handled by PCSE – and again he received the same forecast. Since then, he has endured six and half years of ‘back and forth’ with PCSE trying to get his pensions record updated.
‘They had me down as earning £2 per annum for three years and no record of any of my earnings with an out-of-hours provider which had been my main employment – there were massive gaps.
‘I couldn’t work out where the money was missing and every time I went to PCSE, they would just close the case. I would get an email saying it had been closed without actually ever being resolved.’
The GP told Pulse he had kept a lot of paperwork and was able to supply PCSE with all the information, but they did not process it – and he ended up contacting the pensions ombudsman. With the help of one of their advisors, PCSE eventually accepted – after 18 months – that the information was accurate and was able to provide a total rewards statement in January 2021.
‘I thought phew, finally it’s sorted and decided that I would ask for a forecast every January to keep on top of it. But when I asked again in January 2022, NHSBSA said they hadn’t been given the figures.
‘I chased it up with PCSE, got no response at all and then put in another complaint.’
This complaint was acknowledged in April but has still not been resolved. At the end of September, the GP says they received an email from PCSE stating that there was a ‘higher than normal demand’ and the complaint would be handled ‘at the earliest opportunity’.
‘I just want it to be over…every month you are handing over thousands and thousands of pounds, and you don’t know where it’s going, it’s just disappearing into this blackhole. You don’t know how hard you’re going to have to fight or how long you’re going to have to wait for the money.
‘It’s already been literally hundreds of hours of time finding all the forms, compiling spreadsheets, trying to make it easy to understand so they can see what’s missing…and often doing this in the middle of the night because I wasn’t able to sleep because I was so worried about it.’
He adds: ‘PCSE just use this stonewalling and gaslighting approach…I say that the figures aren’t right, here is the data I’ve submitted and why isn’t it showing on my pension record. Their response is always “you haven’t submitted the data and we can’t process your pensions because you haven’t given us the correct information and the correct forms”.
‘They had lost something like £400,000 of my pension…but for years they’ve been telling me that it’s my fault and that it’s me that hasn’t been submitting things correctly.’
The GP has since gone back to the pensions ombudsman to request more assistance with their case.
‘I’m desperate to retire as soon as possible…I don’t think I can afford to retire until I’m 60 but I don’t know because I haven’t got an up-to-date forecast, so I can’t make any financial decisions.’
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