Verbal agreement on IM&T DES payments

GP representatives say they have verbal agreement that GP practices can still be paid for IM&T DES work after the scheme ends next March. 

The two-year DES ends on 31 March 2008 and in theory GPs who have not completed the work by that date would not be able to claim payment.

However the BMA’s General Practitioner Committee says it has raised the issue of payment for the DES with NHS Employers and argued that payments should still be made to practices that complete the work after the 2007/8 deadline on a one-off basis.

The GPC has told local medical committees: “We have verbal agreement from NHS Employers that this will be the case and have asked that NHS Employers clarifies this arrangement with the Department of Health and PCTs.”

The DES has four components intended to reward GPs for compliance with National Programme for IT (NPfIT) initiatives. Component one pays 40p per patient to practices that agree a practice plan with their PCT for complying with NPfIT and component two offers 44p per patient for achieving data accreditation in preparation for uploading summary records to the spine.

The third component, worth 27p per patient, is paid to practices who regularly validate patients’ addresses and comply with release one of the Electronic Prescription Service. Component four, worth 22 p per patient, can be claimed by practices using a Connecting for Health accredited hosted solution. So far only one system, INPS’s Vision 3 provided by local service provider BT in London, has been approved as a hosted solution.

A spokesperson for NHS Employers told EHI Primary Care that it was unable to confirm or deny whether it had discussed the issue in its negotiations with the GPC.