GP practices in Wales can earn £4250 under a new IT payment scheme worth £2.1 million agreed as part of the renegotiated nGMS contract.
The new directed enhanced service (DES) for IM&T will pay the average practice in Wales £4,000 for a data accreditation exercise and a further £250 payment will be available to practices that have or set up a practice website.
Dr Ian Millington, secretary of Morgannwg Local Medical Committee and a Welsh GPC member, said the deal aimed to build on the progress primary care in Wales had made in IT over the last years through its ICT Foundation Programme.
The Welsh GPC has also sought assurances that funding of IT systems will continue now that funding responsibility has switched to local health boards.
Dr Millington told EHI Primary Care: “We wanted to ensure that there would be funding guaranteed under the new GMS IM&T Programme Board and we are now pretty optimistic that it will be.”
The IM&T DES will reward Welsh practices for running a review of their original Quality and Outcomes Framework clinical registers using the Clinical Audit software provided by the NHS in Wales.
The guidance says: “The tidy up searches will help identify patients who may need to be included within a QOF disease register but have not been assigned an appropriate diagnostic Read code.”
Practices need to complete the searches by the end of September and submit a short report to their LHB showing practice prevalence rates before and after the data validation exercise.
Instead of the Quality Management and Analysis System (QMAS) used in England and Scotland, Welsh practices use Clinical Audit and Clinical Manager software from MSD Informatics.
As well as motions about IT funding, the Welsh LMCs conference held at the end of March called for the Welsh Assembly to sort out security and confidentiality issues relating to sharing of data as part of Informing HealthCare.
Gwent LMC also won approval for two motions criticised internet-only booking for some clinics which has been introduced for some specialties in Gwent. LMC representatives heard concerns that it was the introduction of Choose and Book under another name.
In England practices can earn a maximum of £1.33 per patient under an IT DES aimed at preparing practices for the National Programme for IT and meeting data accreditation standards. There is no IT DES in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
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