Earlier this year, Capita announced a three-year extension to its primary care support services contract with NHS England. Pulse’s recent investigation has analysed the performance of Capita’s service delivery arm Primary Care Support England (PCSE), how it has affected GPs and patient care, and the justification for the extension. As part of this we spoke to GPs about their experience with the organisation. These are their stories.
A GP in Hertfordshire tells Pulse she has been having issues with PCSE since leaving full-time partnership and taking on a salaried role in 2018. Around 18 months into her current role, she took on partnership in the same practice for a year, meaning she became a type 1 rather than a type 2 practitioner again. She notified PCSE of this change but says they have still not updated her records.
‘My accounts with PCSE are still showing both practitioner and principal earnings on both accounts since 2020. I’ve had a conversation with them several times about this, and I’ve filled in all their forms online many times. My accountant has resubmitted my type 2 form three times now.
‘The problem seems to be that they can’t tie up my type 2 forms with my statements because they refuse to accept that I’m a type 2 practitioner. But it’s just beggars belief that they can’t see that there is no way I can be working as both a principal and a salaried GP in the same practice.’
The knock-on effect of this is that the GP cannot access a total rewards statement, which means she cannot get an accurate assessment of her annual allowance tax charges or make financial decisions about her future. She says PCSE understand the error but have still not resolved it.
‘Every time you call them it’s a several hour phone call, so you can only do it on a day off…when you do speak to them, they say it will take 42 working days for them to update it their end, I don’t get it.’
She says that when she last spoke with PCSE, they said they would amend her record and backdate this to July 2020, which was when she became a type 2 practitioner again. But when looking online this month, she discovered they have only backdated it to the date of the phone call – in July 2022.
‘Since I left my original partnership in 2018, they have got nothing right and it’s still a problem today. I can’t work out what my tax liabilities are. This means I am already in arrears and there is going to be interest on that as well, which is unfair. It’s a continual worry about where it’s going to end and when we’re going to get the numbers through so that we can actually sort it out.’
She adds: ‘I don’t think PCSE have any clue about the impact their ineptitude has on people’s lives…this is a constant, constant pressure trying to chase this and sort it out. They don’t understand the implications of it, and they don’t understand why it matters so much.’
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