How to work out your increase in funding

This one is for GMS GP readers (and possibly practice managers, I've no idea if any of those read my blog).

What does the DDRB recommendation mean for your practice? I was rather confused initially, so after working it out (with some help including an illustration by Dr David Shaw on DNUK) I wrote a very short paper to share with others.

So here it is. A quick guide. Except that I wrote it in Word to start with and discovered that copying and pasting from Word into HTML is an interesting experience, one that I will try and avoid in future. Anyway, I retyped it here.

How to work out your GMS funding

There are 4 components to it:

1. Global Sum (GS) increases by 2.4%
   
2. Global Sum Equivalent (GSE) which equals the GS plus your correction factor (if you are an MPIG Practice). This increases by 0.7%
3. QOF points increase by 1.7%
4. Enhanced services (ES) funding increases by 1.7%

For non-MPIG practices, your GS goes up by 2.4%, QOF and ES go up by 1.7%. Simple.

For MPIG practices, it is slightly more complex. Obviously the QOF and ES bits are the same, increasing by 1.7%. But for the rest of it, keep reading:

• Calculate both your new GS and your new GSE.
• If the uplifted GS exceeds the uplifted GSE, you move off MPIG (congratulations).
• If not, the GS component of GSE is uplifted by 2.4% and the CF is likely to drop to give an overall increase in GSE of 0.7%.
  

What this actually means in practice is that your Practice Manager will be able to see if Primary Care Support Services are paying you what they should each month.

Obviously your QOF and Enhanced Services monies will vary from practice to practice, but you should (at least) be able to work out how much each QOF point is worth to you practice. Ask your LMC rep if your PCT is uplifting the Enhanced Services Floor by 1.7%. They should be.

A couple of worked examples to illustrate differing magnitudes of CF:

Practice 1

• GSE £101,000, made up of GS £100,000 and CF £1,000
• GSE increases by 0.7% to £101,707
• But GS uplift gives £102,400
• This is bigger the GSE, so you no longer have a CF and you move off MPIG.

Practice 2

• GSE £110,000, made up of GS £100,000 and CF of £10,000
• GSE increases by 0.7% to £110,770
• GS uplift is also £102,400
• CF=GSE-GS, so =£8370
• So the net effect is an increase of 0.7% with a decrease in reliance on MPIG with a reduced CF (goes down by £1630)

Addendum: the CF is recycled into the GS, so as more Practices move off MPIG, there is no loss of money from the overall pot.