GP practices in England that have signed up for the GP Systems of Choice (GPSoC) initiative are being encouraged to sign their PCT-practice agreement as soon as possible.
Connecting for Health (CfH) and the BMA’s General Practitioner Committee (GPC) have issued joint guidance on the agreement which was originally expected to be signed by all practices by the end of April.
No new deadline for signing the agreements has been set but practices have been warned that failure to sign the agreement will mean their IT systems will no longer be funded by CfH under the GPSoC initiative. More than 6,000 practices have so far signed up for GPSoC.
The guidance states that PCTs have been asked to agree deadlines for signature locally in consultation with their strategic health authority. It adds: “It is in the practice’s and PCT’s interest to sign an agreement as soon as possible to ensure that each party is clear about their obligations.”
A spokesperson for CfH told EHI Primary Care that the agency had no information on what percentage of practices have so far signed the agreement and Dr Grant Ingrams, co chair of the joint IT Committee of the BMA and Royal College of General Practitioners, said some PCTs had signed up some practices while others had not begun the process. The guidance was published this week as part of the GPC’s monthly newsletter.
Dr Ingrams told EHI Primary Care: “Practices need to read the document and the guidance and then sign up because if they don’t they will lose their GPsoC funding. The agreement gives practices more protection than they have ever had.”
The agreement sets out the responsibilities of PCTs and practices to each other for the delivery and receipt of IM&T services. It includes sections on the installation of third party hardware and software, GPs’ rights to IT system choice, business continuity and disaster recovery arrangements and dispute resolution.
Practices will only be able to use the NHS Litigation Authority for disputes resolution if they are regarded as a health service body and the GPC is advising those practices that are not health service bodies to change their status before signing the PCT-practice agreement.
GMS and PMS contractors have the right to be regarded as a health service body, as do APMS contractors if the legal entity holding the contract already has an NHS contract, and the status of contractors can be varied at any time by writing to the PCT.
The GPC states: “It is essential that practices understand how to trigger the dispute resolution process. In addition, we would encourage LMCs to work with their PCTs to ensure that there are local points of escalation to resolve any disputes relating to the delivery of IM&T services.”
The guidance applies to IT systems supplied under GPSoC but CfH and the GPC have said that an equivalent agreement for practices using systems supplied by their local service provider will be developed once the GPSoC PCT-practice agreement has been successfully implemented.
Links
CfH and GPC guidance on the GPSoC PCT-practice agreement
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