NHS Connecting for Health has agreed to provide a fixed contribution to cover the migration costs for GP practices moving to hosted systems outside their local service provider solutions, in a change of its stance on GP Systems of Choice (GPSoC).
An update on the GPSoC proposals released this week also confirms the intention to go out to tender for suppliers to take part in the scheme, as revealed by EHI Primary Care last month.
GPSoC is still subject to approval from both the Treasury and Department of Health, but Professor Mike Pringle, GP clinical lead for CfH, told EHI Primary Care this week that he was confident that would happen and the scheme would be in place by April next year as planned.
He added: “We have to get Treasury approval but we don’t think that in itself will be a problem and we then have to go for OJEU [Official Journal of the European Union] procurement but I don’t see any reason why that shouldn’t be in place by April next year.”
The GPSoC deal sets out six compliance levels that will attract central funding according to the functionality they offer with level 1 requiring RFA99 accreditation, QMAS and Quality and Outcomes Framework compliance and compliance with information governance standards plus compliance with Choose and Book and level one of the Electronic Prescription Service.
Under the old proposals, which were criticised by some GP representatives as limiting choice, data migration costs would only be paid if a practice moved to an LSP solution or upgraded its existing system.
The new proposals mean practices on levels 1-3 who want to move to a non-LSP level four system, which must be a data centre hosted solution, will also get a fixed contribution towards their migration costs.
Professor Pringle said: “It’s public money and we have to be clear that it is used as effectively as it should be. However we do recognise that there will be practices that want to change to a different system supplier and we are meeting the expectations of GPs halfway.”
The update from CfH says the provision of a fixed contribution towards migration costs when practices move from a level 1-3 system to any other level 4 supplier in the GPSoC scheme “is intended to help assure the quality of migrated data and to encourage migration to secure and resilient hosted systems at GPSoC level 4.”
CfH’s GPSoC programme director, Kemi Adenubi said: "We have worked closely with GPs, PCTs, SHAs and suppliers in developing GPSoC and have received a tremendous amount of support. We’ve listened to what GPs and IM&T professionals have said and we think that the resulting proposal represents a sound basis for the delivery of upgraded GP clinical IT systems which will improve the quality of patient care."
Dr Richard Vautrey, a member of the joint GP IT committee or the General Practitioner Committee and the Royal College of General Practitioners and one of the GPC’s negotiators, said: "These welcome changes in the GPSoC plans show what can be achieved with good clinical engagement. The ability of practices to choose which system they use remains crucial to the successful development of IT plans for primary care in the future and we hope to see the substantive implementation of the GPSoC proposals as soon as possible."
Level 6 of the GPSoC scheme remains in the plan which is for practices to be using fully integrated LSP solutions.
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