GP practices cannot refuse to provide NHS England with their patient call data next month as this would ‘risk breaching their contract’, the BMA has warned.
The 2024/25 GP contract was amended to require practices to provide digital telephony data on eight metrics through a national data extraction from October, for use by NHS England, ICBs and PCNs.
GP leaders have previously told Pulse that the data could be used to identify practices who are underperforming, or even ‘quoted against GPs’ with patients.
And as part of collective action which started at the beginning of last month, the BMA GP committee advised practices to ‘not agree yet to share call volume data metrics with NHS England’ for the time being.
GPC England deputy chair Dr David Wrigley said that practices have now been sent requests by NHS England outlining the instructions to comply with this data extraction – and that practices cannot decline to do so as this will risk a contract breach.
The GPCE advice is that should a practice fail to sign up to the cloud-based telephony data extraction ahead of 1 October deadline, ‘there may be a risk of a breach notice being imposed’ as well as ‘contravening the Health and Social Care Act 2012’.
In an update, Dr Wrigley said: ‘The BMA has taken its own legal advice on this request: practices cannot decline the instructions, as doing so will risk breaching their contract.
‘GPC England has made it clear to NHS England that the data must not be used to performance manage practices or single them out for criticism.’
However, the BMA has told Pulse that it will not remove the option of deferring call data submission from its menu for collective action.
Option number nine, which states practices should ‘not agree to share your call volume data metrics with NHS England’ until ‘after October 2024’ refers to the period prior to 1 October.
Dr Wrigley also clarified that practices should continue to defer signing an agreement to keep online triage tools switched on throughout core practice opening hours.
Earlier this year, the BMA said it would ‘challenge’ the contract requirement for GP practices to keep their online systems switched on until 6.30pm regardless of capacity.
According to PCN DES documents, from this year online consultation needs to be available for patients to make administrative and clinical requests ‘at least during core hours’ in order for practices to receive full funding from the Local Capacity and Access Improvement Payments (CAIP).
Dr Wrigley added: ‘You may recall the discussions around online consultations being available to patients every working day 08:00-18:30, irrespective of practice pressures.
‘GPCE has significant concerns around online consultation software being available to patients for the duration of 08:00-18:30 given practices’ lack of capacity, and their responsibilities for ensuing patient safety.
‘GPCE advice continues to apply here: CDs are advised not to sign this particular declaration presently, but to await further guidance closer to the financial year end.’
Last week, Pulse reported on concerns around the ‘potential negative impact’ on patients’ perceptions should their digital telephony data be released to the public.
And earlier this year, the GPC asked NHS England to immediately pause its cloud-based telephony project, following concerns around ‘skyrocketing’ costs for GP practices.
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‘GPC England has made it clear to NHS England that the data must not be used to performance manage practices or single them out for criticism.’
Or sell the data to the Daily Mail so they can do one of their GP bashing articles on the UK’s “worst GPs”.