21.11.18
Capita to relaunch GP list-cleaning campaign to drive out millions of ghost patients
Outsourcing giant Capita will recommence the process of cleaning of three million ‘ghost patients’ from GP lists, the Department of Health and Social Care has said.
Capita was originally responsible to clear GP lists of patients who no longer attend their registered practice when it was granted a £1bn primary care support services contract by NHS England. But the process was halted early, facing strong criticism from the BMA — which labelled the plans “wholly unacceptable” at the time.
Yet following a letter sent by NHS England to practice managers earlier this month, Primary Care Services England (PCSE) will soon be restarting the process of inviting GP practices on a three-year basis.
“As part of NHS England’s commitment to helping reduce the administrative burden on practices as set out in the GP Forward View, we are looking to standardise and simplify the patient list quality check process moving forward and have been working with PCSE to restart this important data quality work,” the letter, signed by managing director of the intensive expert management team Jill Matthews, said.
“Soon, PCSE will be recommencing the process of inviting GP practices, on a three-yearly basis, to reconcile their patient list with the National Health Application and Infrastructure Services system held in PCSE and the Personal Demographic System (Spine).
“Practices will receive a request via email from PCSE which will outline the steps required for them to submit a file of their patient list details to PCSE.”
The government reaffirmed the message last week when minister for health and social care Steve Brine said that Capita will shortly recommence list maintenance for all practices across England.
Brine explained: “This is to ensure that the list of registered patients are as accurate as possible. GP practice list maintenance is pat of NHS England’s contract with PCSE, which is delivered by Capita. GP practices also have a duty to maintain their registered lists in a current and accurate state.”
Last week NHS bosses announced a major overhaul of the cancer screening programmes after the revelation that Capita failed to send almost 50,000 invitations and results to women after cervical cancer screenings.
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