13.03.12
CCGs set-up costing significant time and money
Setting up clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) is taking up huge amounts of doctors’ time and NHS resources, new statistics suggest.
Some doctors are spending as much as four days per week working on the organisation of these key organisations, which will take over funding decisions from April 2013. This leaves only one day a week to attend to patients, meaning locums must be hired, costing the NHS millions.
Research group False Economy, linked to the TUC which opposes the NHS reforms, submitted a Freedom of Information request to identify how much time doctors were spending on this task and how much it was costing. The group argues it is a waste of GPs’ skills, and believes the annual cost to the NHS is at least £20m, based on replies from 106 CCGs.
In Shropshire, Swindon andCamdenand northLondon, doctors are spending four days setting up CCGs and in 16 other areas, at least one doctor spends at least three and a half days away from patients per week.
Clifford Singer, False Economy’s campaign director, said: “This isn’t about greedy GPs – after all, GPs are overwhelmingly opposed to the Bill that has created this situation. Instead, this is about chaotic reforms that are dragging GPs away from patients, and the inevitable financial costs of doing so.
“It is perfectly possible to increase doctors’ involvement in NHS decision-making without creating these rigid, expensive and bureaucratic structures. The Government’s obsession with pursuing this Bill has nothing to do with patient care or saving money and everything to do with privatisation and politics.”
Health minister Simon Burns said: “Putting GPs in leadership positions in the NHS will mean they can improve services for their entire local population. Patients want doctors to make decisions about their care, not managers, and that is what our reforms will deliver between now and 2015 because we are removing large swaths of bureaucracy. This money will be reinvested in the NHS.”
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