200,000 homeless, older and vulnerable people have had ‘lessons’ to get online and contact their doctor reducing GP visits and costs to the NHS. In the first two years of the NHS England pilot scheme ‘Widening Digital Participation’ 14,000 people registered with a GP and looked online first before contacting the doctor. Half of those […]

NHS England, the Government, and the British Medical Association’s General Practitioners Committee have reached agreement on changes to the GP contract in England for 2016/17, to take effect from 1 April 2016. The new contract will see an investment of £220 million for 2016/17 – part of this will provide a pay uplift of one […]

NHS Arden & Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit (NHS Arden & GEM CSU) is carrying out a market engagement exercise on behalf of NHS England for the provision of services aimed at Improving GPs’ Access to Mental Health Support. They’d like to hear back from potential providers by 24 February. This follows a Procurement Prior […]

NHS England is today announcing plans to help GPs cope with extra demand over the winter period by reimbursing the indemnity costs for out-of-hours sessions. The increasing cost of indemnity has been raised at urgent and emergency care review roadshows, by Out of Hours providers as a barrier to delivering care. NHS England is responding […]

More than seven million patients will soon have access to expert advice from a clinical pharmacist when they visit their GP, thanks to the expansion of a new scheme to fund, recruit and employ pharmacists in local practices. NHS England has more than doubled funding from £15m to £31m for its clinical pharmacists in general […]

Improvements are being made to the part of the Calculating Quality Reporting Service (CQRS) system that GP practices use to submit their monthly Friends and Family Test data. Practices had fed back over the past few months that they wanted to be able to go back into the system before the submission deadline to amend […]

An independent evaluation on the first wave Prime Minister’s GP Access Fund (formerly Challenge Fund) pilots has now been published. The £50 million Fund was announced in October 2013 to help improve access to general practice and increase innovation in primary care. The twenty wave one pilots commenced in April 2014 and further funding of £100m […]

Delivery of NHS 111 and General Practice Out of Hours services are to be brought closer together to provide patients with a “new front door” to urgent health care services. The new service will offer patients improved access to a new 24/7 urgent clinical assessment, advice and treatment service – bringing together NHS 111, GP […]

New report aims to cut bureaucracy and ease pressure on GPs A new report published today argues that perhaps 27% of GP appointments could potentially be avoided if there was more coordinated working between GPs and hospitals, wider use of other primary care staff, better use of technology to streamline administrative burdens, and wider system […]

GP access will be a touchstone for demonstrating how the NHS is doing in the future. That’s the view of Ros Roughton, Director of NHS Commissioning, who today outlined the future for seven day services and primary care. Speaking at the Health and Care Innovation Expo 2015 in Manchester, Ros explored the challenges facing GPs […]