GPC report 16 November 2017

GPC Report
For East and West Sussex LMCs
Dr Russell Brown
16 November 2017

The GPC met on Thursday.  This was my first meeting for some time, having missed the last one for family reasons. GPC meets less frequently now, a fact I am still not convinced is sensible.  This time was a GPC England meeting, held at BMA House in London.

Much of the subject matter is confidential but hopefully only until Monday when the official GPC News comes out.  My plan (and you will be able to judge how effective it has been) is to send this report out with the official news. That way you'll get my impressions and the official bits side by side.

Negotiations for 2018/19: 
Negotiations are progressing but are currently strictly confidential.  As previously, this annual round of agreements is not going to solve the problems we face.  We were given much detail to allow us to decide whether to approve of the executive team's direction of travel. Broadly, we do.  More details when I am allowed to.

Update from the exec team and policy leads:
In a new format, we were provided with a written update from the executive team and policy leads.    This is confidential until Monday but is going to form the basis of the official GPC News.  There has been much work (as always) and I hope the new format will be more informative.  Suffice to say here that Julius and I are on different policy groups which we think will be complimentary to each other for Surrey and Sussex.  The subcommittees no longer meet, much of the work is undertaken electronically.  Whether this will continue I don't know but from a workflow point of view it seems to be working. That said, many of us feel disconnected from the work, with the lack of face to face meetings making discussion perhaps less productive. Nevertheless, I understand there will soon be policy group specific pages on the BMA website, if you feel the need to see how the work is divvied up.
Letter to Simon Stevens: Richard Vautrey has written to Mr Stevens to highlight the continuing farce that is Primary Care Support provided (using the word loosely) by Capita. Did I spell that correctly? Yes, good.  There are multiple issues which I suspect will be included in GPC news. Mr Stevens recent speech was both unprecedented and welcome in its criticism of NHS funding.
Practice closures: There has been much work by the BMA Comms team resulting in much media coverage.
Indemnity: there has been a high level meeting with various stakeholders to try and thrash out requirements going forward. It is recognised by DH that something must be done and soon. More meetings are planned.

As I think the policy area reports will be in GPC news, I won't cover them here but may comment depending on what ends up being published. Questions from you are as ever welcomed.

Saving General Practice
Following the publication at LMC Conference of the document of the above name, we discussed next steps. If you haven't seen it, it is available on the BMA website here. Comments welcome.

Scotland contract update
Although an England meeting, we were treated to a 45 minute update on the Scotland contract negotiations, details of which are on the BMA website. It was interesting but given the differences between the NHS in the two countries I am not sure some or indeed much of it could be applied in England. It seemed to me to be a step closer to a salaried service, albeit that it was emphasised that the independent contractor model was being promoted.

Accountable care models
We received and briefly discussed the BMA response to a consultation about proposed changes to the regulations to allow their development. The consultation was actually quite limited in scope but taking into account the views of various branch of practice committees including GPC the response was focussed and constructively critical. In particular the point was made that service integration does not actually require a new contractual model.  Again. The BMA response can be found at here.

LMC England Conference
As usual, a paper had been prepared for GPC outlining the motions passed and what effect these have on workflows and policy. Of course, most of us where there anyway as voting members of LMCs.... The BMA has published news from Conference here. There is also a webcast if you missed Conference and want to watch some or all of it. Yes, I know, but I felt I should tell you it's there. You know, in case you have a spare few hours.

NHS England review of urgent care
A large document entitled "Integrated Urgent Care Service Specification" was provided to us. It is only 148 pages if you fancy going to look for it. As ever with NHS England work of this nature, it makes enormous assumptions about General practice and it won't work without huge investment of resources, which ain't going to happen. Plus ça change.

The next GPC meeting is in January, a GPCUK meeting being held in Edinburgh.  I hope you have found this report helpful.  Please feedback so that I can ensure my reports are useful.