‘Losers and winners’ for GP IT

The planned redistribution of GP IT funding across England will be “controversial” and “create losers as well as winners”, according to NHS England’s head of business systems, Richard Jefferson.

EHI reported earlier this month that GP IT funding will now be paid to clinical commissioning groups on a per-head-of-population basis.

Speaking at HC2014 in Manchester last week, Jefferson gave details of the new funding formula.

He said £140m will be allocated equitably by GP registered population. This means a payment of around £2.60 per patient.

Payments for GP IT in this financial year were based on estimates provided by outgoing primary care trusts and varied widely across the country.

Jefferson said the old funding formula was “clearly inequitable” and argued NHS England “had to revert to something clearly recognisable and achievable”.

Introducing the new arrangements will, however, create significant losers, he acknowledged in a presentation at HC.

“We need to recognise this will cause some pain,” Jefferson said. “In some areas clinical commissioning groups will receive reduced allocations through the move to an equitable distribution.”

Jefferson said that in the future, money will be ‘ring-fenced’ and allocated directly through local area teams; part of a wider move towards LATs taking centre-stage on GP IT and services.

To help practices that lose out on funding as a result of the new population-based formula, a £20m transition fund will be available in each of the next two years. CCGs that previously invested heavily in GP IT and have existing contracts can apply for this extra money.

“For those facing cuts we will create a £20m transitional fund for the next two years, to enable them to plan to reduce costs,” Jefferson explained.

High cost areas of spend to be targeted may include community of interest networks.

“We will look at areas like COINS causing unexpectedly high costs. And we will assess based on committed revenue costs.”

Jefferson added that there should be winners as well with some CCGs benefiting from the new arrangements.

Chair of the BMA’s General Practitioners Committee Dr Chaand Nagpaul urged NHS England not to rush through a simplistic approach as the new funding arrangements could have significant consequences for individual CCGs.

“It’s crucial that a like-for-like comparison is made between CCGs, rather than a simplistic approach, especially given that different CCGs will have made different historical arrangements,” he said.

“Distributing IT funding at a stroke through this approach could result in a destabilisation of the provision of IT for GP practices, which could have a very significant impact on the way in which GPs provide care.”