NHS England is today announcing plans to help GPs cope with extra demand over the winter period by reimbursing the indemnity costs for out-of-hours sessions. The increasing cost of indemnity has been raised at urgent and emergency care review roadshows, by Out of Hours providers as a barrier to delivering care. NHS England is responding […]

More than seven million patients will soon have access to expert advice from a clinical pharmacist when they visit their GP, thanks to the expansion of a new scheme to fund, recruit and employ pharmacists in local practices. NHS England has more than doubled funding from £15m to £31m for its clinical pharmacists in general […]

Improvements are being made to the part of the Calculating Quality Reporting Service (CQRS) system that GP practices use to submit their monthly Friends and Family Test data. Practices had fed back over the past few months that they wanted to be able to go back into the system before the submission deadline to amend […]

An independent evaluation on the first wave Prime Minister’s GP Access Fund (formerly Challenge Fund) pilots has now been published. The £50 million Fund was announced in October 2013 to help improve access to general practice and increase innovation in primary care. The twenty wave one pilots commenced in April 2014 and further funding of £100m […]

Delivery of NHS 111 and General Practice Out of Hours services are to be brought closer together to provide patients with a “new front door” to urgent health care services. The new service will offer patients improved access to a new 24/7 urgent clinical assessment, advice and treatment service – bringing together NHS 111, GP […]

New report aims to cut bureaucracy and ease pressure on GPs A new report published today argues that perhaps 27% of GP appointments could potentially be avoided if there was more coordinated working between GPs and hospitals, wider use of other primary care staff, better use of technology to streamline administrative burdens, and wider system […]

GP access will be a touchstone for demonstrating how the NHS is doing in the future. That’s the view of Ros Roughton, Director of NHS Commissioning, who today outlined the future for seven day services and primary care. Speaking at the Health and Care Innovation Expo 2015 in Manchester, Ros explored the challenges facing GPs […]

Aims to support GPs in areas with biggest primary care workload pressures. A new £15m scheme to fund, recruit and employ clinical pharmacists in GP surgeries has been launched today by NHS England Chief Executive Simon Stevens. The three year initiative, which will go live this year, will give patients the additional support of an […]

The latest GP Patient Survey (GPPS), which seeks the views of over two and a half million people every year about their experience of GP services and NHS dentistry, is published today. The data included in this publication was collected in two waves during July to September 2014 and January to March 2015. Dr. David […]

The number of GPs offering appointments, repeat prescriptions and access to summary information in medical records online has tripled in the first three months of the year with almost every GP surgery in England offering the service. Data published today by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) shows that over 97% of patients […]