In full: NHS England consultation on the future of general practice

What are NHS England suggesting?

• Defining high quality general practice and GPs’ responsibilities and accountabilities through the GP contract
• Adding stronger incentives for inter-practice collaboration and collaboration with other providers in primary, secondary and social care into the contract
• Changing the contract to better recognise and reward quality of care for patients with co-morbidities and complex health problems
• Rewarding practices for wider outcomes such as enhanced quality of care for long term conditions, reducing avoidable emergency admissions, reducing incidence of strokes and heart attacks or improving patient experience of integrated care
• Looking at how PMS and APMS contracts can help address local challenges
• Introducing a named GP for patients with complex needs
• Strengthening accountability for the quality of OOH services, and ensuring they are more integrated with daytime general practice and wider urgent care services.
• Stimulating more convenient routine access to general practice services through improving the speed of contact for urgent problems, the ability to book appointments in advance and electronically, and making evening/weekend appointments more available
• Developing QOF to preserve its essential features but reducing the ‘tick-box’ culture feel
• Reduce process-orientated measures and get the best value from enhanced services
• Developing practice IT systems to support more efficient and integrated working
• Ensuring practices are making the most effective use of practice staff, including practice nurses and practice managers.
• Getting practices to publish an increasing range of comparative public information
• Looking at workforce issues and the strategic priorities for improvements in education and training to reflect modern general practice