BMA reveals options for GP collective action

Exclusive The BMA has revealed potential actions that GP practices could take as part of collective action later this year.

Pulse understands that these include refusing to engage in advice and guidance, seeing patients ‘face to face as a default’, and switching off the GP connect functionality which permits remote NHS 111 appointment booking.

The BMA is currently planning for potential GP collective action to commence on 1 August, depending on the result of a ballot GP partners which will open on Monday 17 June and close on Monday 29 July.

Officers from the union’s GP committee England are travelling across England in a series of roadshows, hosted by LMCs leaders, with the first happening in Stafford yesterday, providing information on a ‘list of potential actions practices can take’.

As reported by Pulse earlier this year, the GPCE is looking at options for collective action that would affect GP interface with other NHS services as well as workload, rather than practices ‘shutting their doors’.

Some of the actions presented at the roadshow in Stafford were:

• Switch off GP Connect functionality which permits remote 111 appointment booking. Provide instead a dedicated telephone connection for when the practice has capacity to receive calls
• Switch off GP Connect functionality which permits the entry of coding into the GP clinical record by third party providers
• Withdraw permission for data sharing agreements which exclusively use data for secondary purposes (i.e. not direct care)
• See patients face to face as a default, unless there is a compelling reason not to do so
• Stop any voluntary services
• Lawfully exit data sharing agreements where this has no direct benefit to patients
• Freeze sign-up to any new data sharing agreements or local system data sharing platform

North Staffordshire LMC chair Dr Chandra Kanneganti told Pulse that the GPC has ‘come up with some good actions’ that practices can take.

He said: ‘One of the things that was on the menu was stopping advice and guidance, and stopping things that do not improve patient care.

‘And there’s lots of options for that, they are proposing three different menus and we as an LMC would be happy to recommend those options.

‘I think that actually rejuvenated people – I think this is something people will vote for, I can definitely see that.’

Last month  GPCE members voted through a motion to proceed with a ‘non-statutory ballot’ in June, meaning any action taken by GP partners will ‘not involve contract breaches’.

The BMA suggested that instead GP partners could limit appointments to its own ‘safe working maximum’ of 25, or reject workload dump by stopping or reducing ‘work that they’re not formally contracted to do’.

The committee indicated that this is a ‘first phase’ of action, and that ‘further escalation’ beyond a non-statutory ballot can be stopped if the Government agrees to make ‘contractual improvements’ in 2024/25 and restore GP funding to 2018/19 levels.

It follows a referendum by the GPCE which found that 99% of GPs did not agree with the recent contract imposition, as well as the committee officially declaring a ‘dispute’ with NHS England.