GPC Report 17 April 2014

GPC Report

For East and West Sussex LMCs

Dr Russell Brown

17 April 2014

The GPC held its latest meeting today.   The latest official GPC news can be found at the BMA Communities web site.

Collaborative fees: In some areas of the country, there have been issues with getting these fees paid.  I am not aware of any particular issues in Sussex, but if there are any, please let the LMC office know.  It has been acknowledged this is an NHS responsibility and the system that existed for payments prior to the changes last year should still be functional.

Negotiation report

As ever, much of this is confidential, but as discretion is my watchword, I can reveal that we appear to have someone in a position of influence who wants to see lots of money come into primary care (which as you may recall includes general practice).  Treasury however is apparently concerned that hospital waiting times will go up, which demonstrates nicely the difficulties we have in perception of the problem and potential solutions to it within the NHS, as well as the apparent mismatch in viewpoints, not to mention priorities, in different places in Government..

Contract implementation

Admission avoidance DES read codes should be available by the end of April.  I am unclear which April but I assume the aim is this year.  Hopefully, there will very soon be some short and snappy GPC guidance on implementation to compliment the official joint guidance.

Transforming Primary Care, aka the £5 per head.  

A document sent out by NHS England has made it clear that this money should be used to support the work of practices.  Local plans are developing and I anticipate the usual proactive and productive discussions will take place between the LMC and CCGs in the two Sussexes.

Prime Minister’s Challenge Fund

The eagle-eyed amongst you will have seen that Brighton and Hove have bid successfully for some of this money.  I heard that all these schemes will be independently evaluated in due course.

QOF 13-14 payments

There was an error in calculating the achievement scores of some practices, who will have been contacted by HSCIC already.  It is not yet clear, however, whether PMS deductions have been similarly affected.

QOF 14-15

There is an issue affecting the value of the average QOF point as the average list size changes.  This is being actively addressed by the negotiating team as it has a small but significant effect on funding for General Practice and will continue to do so in future if not sorted.

PMS reviews

Guidance for LMCs will be issued shortly.  In my personal view, PMS practices might be sensible to ask the LMC for assistance at an early stage as there is unlikely to be anything other than a single model approach, perhaps even on a national basis, adopted for these locally negotiated contracts. GPC is prevented from negotiating directly on matters relating to PMS contracts.

Care.data

There was yet another presentation on this.  There is now an independent advisory group, which has an interesting combination of members.  I am not sure if the membership is currently in the public domain.  However, this is highly likely to be discussed at length at LMC Conference, where GPC policy on the matter will be set.

Communications

I may actually have news I can share on something which may actually be quite promising soon.  As things stand, I can’t/haven’t.

Recruitment and the future

An excellent paper was presented by some younger members of the committee, which is included as an attachment to this report.  Please, read it, forward it on, give feedback and encourage others to do so to, either to me or to the GPC secretariat.

Link to recruitment document in my google drive.

The next meeting is to be held on 19 June 2014, as the annual Conference of Local Medical Committees, the annual “policy setting” conference, is taking place on 23/24 May in York.  I hope to be tweeting/updating from there as we go along (@drbrown1970), broadband and batteries allowing.  

I hope you have found this report helpful.  Please feedback so that I can ensure my reports are useful.  Feel free to email me if you would like to comment or ask me anything.  Comments can also be posted on my blog where this report will also be posted at www.thebrownstuff.blogspot.com

Dr Russell Brown