Three IIF targets scrapped in 2024/25 GP contract

Funding from three investment and impact fund (IIF) indicators will be reallocated to capacity and access payments (CAP) under the 2024/25 GP contract.

A letter to PCNs from NHS England’s primary care national director, Dr Amanda Doyle, stated three IIF indicators covering flu and access would be retired, with the £46m funding from these moving to CAP payments increasing total CAP funding to £292m.

The letter, released yesterday (28 February), also confirmed that the proportion of CAP payments delivered through the capacity and access support payment (CASP) and capacity and access improvement payment (CAIP) will continue to be 70% and 30% respectively.

However, in a bid to ‘improve cashflow’ CAIP payments can now be paid monthly at ‘any point in the year’ instead of at the end of the financial year which is currently the case.

Clinical directors will need to show their integrated care board (ICB) that they have put in place one or more of the three individual components of the Modern General Practice Access (MGPA) model.

Each component of the MGPA – better digital telephony, simpler online requests and faster care navigation assessment and response – attracts one third of the overall CAIP payment.

PCNs will continue to have the discretion to use CASP funding ‘according to local needs’ such as supervision of ARRS staff or to increase the care home premium within the PCN.

This continues the trend seen in the 2023/24 contract of reducing the number of IIF indicators which went from 36 to five. Just two of the indicators will remain for 2024/25, those on learning disability health checks and FIT testing in cancer referral pathways, worth £13m.

Leadership payments

The PCN clinical director and PCN leadership and management payment, worth £89m, will be rolled into core PCN funding to give a total of £183m with the aim of providing PCNs with ‘greater autonomy’.

Dr Doyle, wrote: ‘This is intended to provide PCNs with greater autonomy and to allow PCN clinical directors to lead their PCN in the way that best suits local arrangements.’

It was also revealed that funding for general practice as a whole in 2024/25 will increase by 2.23% in 2024/25, which equates to a £259m increase to £11,864m.