Choose and Book to end financial incentives

Financial incentives to encourage GPs to use Choose and Book will end in just over six months and patients will provide the impetus to further uptake of the e-booking scheme, according to the scheme’s medical director.

Dr Stephen Miller, a GP in south London and national medical director for Choose and Book, told EHI Primary Care that GP practices should make the most of the current directed enhanced service (DES) for choice and booking, which rewards GPs with up to 48p per patient for using the electronic booking service.

He said: “The DES comes to an end at the end of March and there won’t be another DES so I would hope that there would be some significant progress in the next six months.”

Dr Miller said uptake figures for Choose and Book (CaB) were starting to move upwards again after several months where around 40% of bookings were made through CaB every week. Latest figures for the week ending 1 October show 43% of referrals being made via CaB.

Dr Miller said: “Pleasingly the figures are now starting to rise again after a few months where we were stuck at about 40%. The DES has come into effect again from the beginning of September which might have had something to do with it.”

Release four of Choose and Book is due out in April next year and is currently being developed to deliver the government’s promise that patients requiring referral are entitled to a “free choice” of any hospital in the country that meets NHS standards.

Dr Miller added: “If you want to quickly find out what services are available across the country the Choose and Book application will enable you to do that and once patients get to know they can go anywhere I think there will be patient pressure to use Choose and Book.”