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.
Dr Alison Johnston, a GP in Cumbria, has experienced issues with PCSE on both a personal and practice level.
In September 2019 – just a few days before payday – Dr Johnston’s practice discovered that around £30,000 had been incorrectly deducted from their payments for employer and employee pension contributions. PCSE should have actually taken this money from a neighbouring practice in the same building. The two practices are completely separate from one another.
‘Our practice manager at the time tried to contact them but couldn’t speak to anyone. She raised an urgent enquiry but was told it could take 10 working days for them to respond,’ Dr Johnston says.
‘In the end we tweeted them, which seemed to get their attention.’
The practice was eventually told that PCSE would pay the money back, but it took a few days: ‘It was a massive amount of money for a small practice to suddenly have taken out of their account.’
‘Luckily, we had some emergency funds in our accounts so just managed to cover it [payday], but it was touch and go really.’
Meanwhile, in September 2020 Dr Johnston requested her pensions statement via PCSE’s online portal and was told they would respond within 40 days. She received no response within this timeframe, after which she contacted NHS England’s pensions escalation department. In February 2021, she was told by PCSE that it been resolved but this was not the case – they had attached information that showed there was still a year missing from her pension.
‘I told them I was not happy with this and if they didn’t resolve it and put the money back onto the statement, then I was going to go to the pensions ombudsman. So, they did finally take note of that and someone from PCSE rang me and sorted it out – it was finally resolved in February 2021.’
She adds: ‘It took loads of time to resolve – and it’s quite stressful thinking my pension is less than what it should be because there is a year missing. It’s a lot of hassle trying to sort it out. As a busy GP you are trying to see patients, you haven’t got time to be chasing people up all the time.’
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