Verbal agreement on IM&T DES payments

Tags: BT GP GPs NPfIT PCT Vision Vision 3

29 Nov 2007

GP representatives say they have verbal agreement that GP practices can still be paid for IM&T DES work after the scheme ends next March.

The two-year DES ends on 31 March 2008 and in theory GPs who have not completed the work by that date would not be able to claim payment.

However the BMA’s General Practitioner Committee says it has raised the issue of payment for the DES with NHS Employers and argued that payments should still be made to practices that complete the work after the 2007/8 deadline on a one-off basis.

The GPC has told local medical committees: “We have verbal agreement from NHS Employers that this will be the case and have asked that NHS Employers clarifies this arrangement with the Department of Health and PCTs.”

The DES has four components intended to reward GPs for compliance with National Programme for IT (NPfIT) initiatives. Component one pays 40p per patient to practices that agree a practice plan with their PCT for complying with NPfIT and component two offers 44p per patient for achieving data accreditation in preparation for uploading summary records to the spine.

The third component, worth 27p per patient, is paid to practices who regularly validate patients’ addresses and comply with release one of the Electronic Prescription Service. Component four, worth 22 p per patient, can be claimed by practices using a Connecting for Health accredited hosted solution. So far only one system, INPS’s Vision 3 provided by local service provider BT in London, has been approved as a hosted solution.

A spokesperson for NHS Employers told EHI Primary Care that it was unable to confirm or deny whether it had discussed the issue in its negotiations with the GPC.

Reader's Comments

A certain failure in PCT and central systems?

maryhawking@tigers.demon.co.uk

30 Nov 07 09:11

If the IM&T DES is *not* continued into 2008/09, there could be a number of undesirable consequences for everyone - CfH, the NHS, the DH, ministers - and practices and their patients. A total lose-lose situation. One of the consequences might even be a class-action,or at any rate, the equivalent within the NHS, against the PCTs and CfH for failing to provide the support and facilities needed. Take data accreditation - and the preliminary phase of preparing data to a standard fit for accreditation. PCTs were obliged to provide PRIMIS+ trained facilitators to help practices with this. My PCT appointed one - for 61 practices - this summer - **18 months into a 24 month DES**. As far as I know, we have no-one trained for data accreditation, and no practices in the whole of England had been accredited at the end of October. Equally, there are no accredited hosting arrangements in most of the country - and I would not contemplate changing systems under GPSoC simply for a one-off payment of 44p. In addition, central servers - I'm not in London - do not appear to be totally reliable from recent reports. Regardless of the outcomes of the negotiations to continue the DES into the next year - or, at the rate the services needed for the practices to achieve anything are being provided, into subsequent years, - unless there is an identifiable funding stream for the intensive work needed at practice level, the objectives of the IM&T DES will probably not be a practice priority - with knock-on effects on, in particular, the NCR - both detailed and summary - and even the legal status of paperlite practice ;->> DESs are part of negotiated payment packages for general practice services: where else would it be expected that when the sub-contractor has failed to provide the necessary goods, the sub-sub contractor should be expected to deliver after the end of the contract, and without payment? Yes, I do feel aggrieved - I've been nagging my PCT (and my previous PCT) since the IM&T DES was announced - and I do want my data accredited!