A GP surgery is leading the way in the fight against antibiotic resistance with simple tests that dramatically reduce unnecessary prescribing. Attenborough Surgery in Bushey, Hertfordshire, was awarded £10,000 “acorn” funding in the 2015/16 NHS Innovation Challenge Prizes to further develop its system of point-of-care fingerprick blood tests which help clinicians decide whether antibiotics are […]

NHS England has announced it will recommission the Community Pharmacy Seasonal Influenza Vaccination programme in 2016/17, after nearly a quarter of a million more people benefited from vaccinations in a community pharmacy setting during the previous year. A total of 10,407,913 seasonal flu vaccinations were delivered in 2015/16. This included 240,259 additional patients who chose […]

The head of NHS England today (Thursday) sets out a multi-billion plan designed to get general practice back on its feet, improve patient care and access, and invest in new ways of providing primary care. Publishing a General Practice Forward View – developed with Health Education England and in discussion with the Royal College of […]

A patient safety alert has been issued by NHS England around the prioritisation of general practice home visits. When a request for a home visit is made, it is vital that general practices have a system in place to assess: whether a home visit is clinically necessary; and the urgency of need for medical attention. […]

200,000 homeless, older and vulnerable people have had ‘lessons’ to get online and contact their doctor reducing GP visits and costs to the NHS. In the first two years of the NHS England pilot scheme ‘Widening Digital Participation’ 14,000 people registered with a GP and looked online first before contacting the doctor. Half of those […]

NHS England, the Government, and the British Medical Association’s General Practitioners Committee have reached agreement on changes to the GP contract in England for 2016/17, to take effect from 1 April 2016. The new contract will see an investment of £220 million for 2016/17 – part of this will provide a pay uplift of one […]

NHS Arden & Greater East Midlands Commissioning Support Unit (NHS Arden & GEM CSU) is carrying out a market engagement exercise on behalf of NHS England for the provision of services aimed at Improving GPs’ Access to Mental Health Support. They’d like to hear back from potential providers by 24 February. This follows a Procurement Prior […]

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 […]