GPC England Report
For East and West Sussex LMCs
Dr Russell Brown
6 February 2020
The GPC England met again this week. I managed to actually attend in person, a fact which took many of my fellow committee members by surprise. More than one asked “Who are you, are you new?”
This meeting was an extra meeting to discuss contract negotiations, after we voted to reject the offer at the previous meeting in January. There were no other items for discussion. No doubt you will already have seen the official press release from the GPC executive. The deal on offer was definitively the final result of negotiations, with the deal having been signed off by all government departments including the Prime Minister’s office before coming to GPC. This differs significantly to “business as usual” in these matters.
The most recent offer is a significant improvement on the previous iteration. It would be fair to say that NHSEI took the feedback they sought and received before Christmas very seriously.
I think that this offer is the best deal that could have been negotiated at this time.
There are some QOF changes, which increase the amount of resourcing in QOF, with an extra 8 points, as well as an increase in the pounds per point as well as a 4% increase in global sum.
Funding has been retained in global sum for vaccinations and immunisation but there will be an additional item of service element to this service. Details are in the official GPC information.
Service Specifcations: That said, there are still issues and concerns with it and much will depend on the details in the guidance support in the service specifications, which is still to be agreed and written. The service specifications have been significantly reduced in detail, with all targets removed.
Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme: Some of the benefits include a change from 70% to 100% reimbursement for the new staff recruited under the ARRS. While I suspect the word “savings” will be used, this is still a significantly reduced expenditure for practices. Additionally, the number of people recruited to these roles is now up to 27000, from 20000. And not only that but these staff will continue to be funded beyond the end of the current contract term, so after 2023/24. There will be a requirement for CCGs to assist with recruitment to these positions.
Other agreements reached: There are measures which actively support partnership as a means to deliver general practice, especially the £20000 Partnership Accession Payment for new partners. Whereas before there was a limited pot of money for this, this restriction has been removed, so no matter how many more partners can be recruited, ALL of them will be eligible for this scheme. It should be noted that GPC exec and NHSEI are still discussing the full details of the eligibility criteria for this scheme. There will be further work on the occupational health services available to practices and PCNs, as well as arrangements for Enhanced Shared Parental Leave for salaried GPs as soon as possible. There will be amendments to the NHS pension scheme to ensure PCNs are covered. There will also be a new and transparent measure of patient experience of access to general practice piloted, for nationwide introduction by April 2021.
It is worth noting that the involvement of LMCs, for once, appears throughout the documentation.
So what does this mean for practices?
Practices can choose to sign up to the DES or not.
If they do, they will have access to the benefits described above, with the additional funding described. For that, there will be more work, even though the PCNs should be recruiting these staff to do much of it. It is unclear to me currently how CQC for example will view these new staff and their relationships to practices (as this is of course a DES). These new team members will need to be managed, supported and supervised, to varying degrees.
If they do not, they will not have to partake with this extra work, though there will remain a contractual obligation to engage with the activities of a PCN, in terms of data sharing at the very least. Global sum will still go up, though overall funding increases will be lower than for practices that sign up to the DES.
GPC England were asked to vote on whether to agree the package on offer for 2020/2021 and the result was conclusively in favour though not unanimous.
Links to the BMA news and info are below:
The next meeting GPC in on 19 March and is a GPC UK meeting, to be held in Cardiff.
I hope you have found this report helpful. Please feedback so that I can ensure my reports are useful.
Dr Russell Brown
