NHS England 19 February 2016
- 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 developments include:
- GP practices will be required to record data on the availability of evening and weekend opening for routine appointments, which is to be collected until 2020/21.
- GP practices will record annually the number of instances where a practice pays a locum doctor more than an indicative maximum rate, as set out by NHS England.
- The MenACWY 18 years will be extended to allow for the opportunistic vaccination of 19-25 year old non-freshers who self-present for vaccination.
- NHS Employers and GPC will work with NHS England and the Department of Health to ensure that appropriate and meaningful data relating to patients’ named accountable GP is made available at practice level. This data will be shared internally within practices and used to improve services for patients.
- Whilst the Avoiding Unplanned Admissions Enhanced Service (ES) will continue for a further year with minor amendments to clarify the timeframe around care planning, consideration will be given to its future during the 2017/18 negotiations.
- The Dementia Enhanced Service will cease as at 31 March 2016 and the £42 million resource will be transferred into global sum, in recognition of the fact that GPs are more routinely diagnosing dementia. All other Enhanced Services will continue unchanged.
