NHS England publishes outcomes of GP Personal Medical Services review
NHS England has today published the arrangements it will apply to ensure the most effective use of resources for Personal Medical Services (PMS). PMS is a locally-agreed alternative to General Medical Service (GMS) for providers of general practice.
NHS England area teams will be reviewing PMS contracts over the next two years to ensure that additional funding meets a set of consistent principles and criteria, agreed as part of the review.
The criteria that area teams will apply are that additional funding must:
- reflect local strategic plans for primary care agreed jointly with clinical commissioning groups (CCGs);
- secure services or outcomes that go beyond what is expected of core general practice or improve primary care premises;
- help reduce health inequalities;
- give equality of opportunity to all GP practices;
- support fairer distribution of funding at a locality level.
Ben Dyson, Director of Commissioning Policy and Primary Care at NHS England, said:
“NHS England is committed to supporting innovation and quality improvement in primary care and reducing health inequalities.
“We want to continue to use Personal Medical Services arrangements to achieve these objectives. At the same time, we need to ensure that there is an equitable approach to funding.
“Where GP practices are receiving extra funding per patient, this has to be fairly and transparently linked to the quality of care they provide for patients or the particular needs of the local population that they serve.
“The purpose of this review has been to put in place a much clearer framework that will enable our area teams to ensure that extra investment in Personal Medical Services meets these criteria.
“In reviewing local arrangements, our area teams will work closely with local communities to ensure that these resources are used to help provide more joined-up services for patients.”
See the following documents for more information:
One comment
Local work in Bristol has been unable to show any correlation between GP income per patient, deprivation and other measures of need. Similarly income did not correlate well with many measures of practice performance.