15.11.13
Hunt promises a named accountable GP for over-75s
The new GP contract for 2014/15 has now been agreed, health secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced.
A named GP will be available for all patients aged over 75, with personalised care plans agreed and coordinated care for elderly patients discharged from A&E.
The contract was agreed with the BMA’s General Practice Committee (GPC) and NHS England and directed by the DH.
GPs will be required to offer same-day telephone consultations and a dedicated phone line for paramedics, A&E doctors and care homes to advise on treatment. They must regularly review emergency admissions from care homes to avoid unnecessary call-outs in the future, and monitor and report on the quality of out-of-hours care.
More than a third of the Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF) will be reduced, to scrap “tick box targets”. The money from this will be moved into overall budgets and services.
On transparency, GPs must publish the results of the new inspection regime in surgery waiting rooms and look at how to publish details of their earnings.
Practices will be freer to recruit patients from outside the traditional boundaries and the Friends and Family test will be introduced to general practice. IT requirements will also be introduced to ensure all surgeries offer appointments and repeat prescriptions online.
Over a six year period, automatic pay rises for older doctors will be phased out, and the cost of seniority payments will be reinvested in general funding for practices, based on the amount and types of patients they serve.
Hunt said: “The 2004 GP contract broke the personal link between GP and patient. It piled target after target on doctors, took away their responsibility for out-of-hours care and put huge pressure on our A&E departments. This government has a plan to sort this out and today’s announcement of a new GP contract is a vital step.
“We are bringing back named GPs for the vulnerable elderly. This means proper family doctors, able to focus on giving elderly people the care they need and prevent unnecessary trips to hospital. Rigorous new inspections of GP surgeries will mean every local person will know whether they are getting the care they deserve.
“This is about fixing the long-term pressures on our A&E services, empowering hard-working doctors and improving care for those with the greatest need.”
Chair of the Council of the RCGP, Dr Clare Gerada said: “This is welcome news for patients and for GPs as it will help us to get back to our real job of providing care where it is most needed, rather than more box-ticking.
“It is not the remit of the College to get involved in contractual negotiations, but we have been calling for this for three years and are pleased that the Government and the BMA have been able to reach a solution that is workable for doctors and, most importantly, focuses our time on improving the care that our patients want and deserve.”
GPC’s chair for BMA said: “We recognise that GPs are facing unprecedented pressures on workload with rising demand and limited resources. From the outset of this year’s contract talks, the BMA has sought to positively engage with the government to address the difficult financial and workload pressures facing general practice in order to find new ways of improving patient care, while at the same time freeing up GPs and practice nurses from pointless bureaucracy.
“The BMA believes that through constructive talks we have reached an acceptable deal that will help to relieve workload pressures on GPs and is a first step towards enabling general practice to meet the challenges that it faces in the coming years.”
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