GPs’ future should include IT incentives

GP practices should be offered financial incentives to support data quality and to move to paperless practices, according to GP representatives.

The BMA’s General Practitioner Committee has published a 50 point plan for the future of general practice in the UK, which includes recommendations on a series of areas including IT, the Quality and Outcomes Framework and out-of-hours care.

‘Fit for the future – the evolution of general practice’ says the further development of GP IT will require continual improvement in data quality and progress towards paperless practices. It calls for financial incentives to support that move.

Data quality in GP records has come under the spotlight recently, with the leak of a confidential draft report on the evaluation of the Summary Care Record programme. This suggests data extracted from GP records sometimes contains inaccuracies and omissions.

The report’s chapter on IT makes no mention of the SCR, but does say that the GP elements of the National Programme for IT in the NHS should be reviewed and those “that have had a positive effect on healthcare” should be supported and built on.

The document singles out GP2GP, GP Systems of Choice, Pathlinks and the Electronic Prescription Service as elements which “need a future”

The GPC says GPSoC and other agreements need to be honoured and progressed and says the continual innovation and development of GP systems throughout the UK will be a challenge once the GPsoC agreement expires next year.

The document says system choice and a plurality of suppliers is important to promote system development and says IT systems should continue to be developed to support interoperability and sharing of information.

However it adds: “Systems which are designed to be the same across whole health communities including different types of healthcare (for example secondary and primary) are likely to have more drawbacks than benefits and should not be introduced.”

The GPC also recommends that concerns about issues of patient consent and confidentiality are addressed and says IT projects should have realistic timescales and a managed pace of change.

On the QoF, the GPC says the incentive scheme must continue to be a national UK framework with no local QoF. It also argues that neither PROMS nor the GP Patient Survey should be included in QOF “as their effectiveness as a reliable indicator of quality in primary care has yet to be evaluated.”

The GPC said the document represented its current thinking on how UK general practice should evolve and was the first in a series of documents on the evolution of general practice.

Dr Laurence Buckman, GPC chairman, said general practice had undergone huge changes in recent years some of which had been beneficial, such as the growth in the range of services provided by GPs, while others, such as the introduction of the private sector, were of concern.

He added: “We know some aspects of general practice could be improved but we want this to be in a way that benefits patients, doesn’t fragment the NHS and doesn’t demoralise the workforce.”