Almost 70% of GP practices have received only partial or no activity data from their primary care trust to take on practice-based commissioning, according to a survey conducted by the Improvement Foundation.
The survey of 395 practices across England found that 11 per cent of practices have received no activity data from their PCT and 23% had been given limited activity data in a format they couldn’t understand. A further 35% of practices reported receiving only limited activity data from their PCT in a useable format.
The Improvement Foundation, formerly the National Primary Care Development Team, also asked practices if they information they had received was at individual patient level. A total of 59% of practices reported that the data was not at individual patient level while 41% of practices had received data on individual patients.
The survey also found that 84% of practices were interested to very interested in getting engaged with PBC but only 32% felt their PCT was very or fully supportive of PBC. A total of 57% of practices had not received a budget for outpatients, 59% had not received a budget for emergency care and 58% had not received a budget for inpatients.
Information released by the Department of Health this week also showed that only 40% of PCTs had implemented arrangements for PBC. PCTs are counted as implementing arrangements if they meet four criteria, including providing practices with information about their clinical activity and historical spending patterns and comparisons with local and national indicators.
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