New C+B incentives from April announced
Practices will be able to earn approximately £2000 per partner if they can meet government targets on choice and booking by March 2007, the detailed guidance on the new payment scheme reveals. Guidance from the BMA’s GP committee and NHS Employers on changes to the nGMS contract from April spells out how the one year […]
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Manchester hospitals link up with GPs
Central Manchester and Manchester Children’s University Hospitals NHS Trust have launched a system that enables clinical correspondence to be electronically exchanged between hospitals and GP practices, providing overnight delivery of patient discharge information when they leave hospital. Using software from clinical correspondence specialists Medisec, the system provides electronic links will be used between all the […]
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Choose and Book target now March 2007
The target date for the implementation of Choose and Book has been moved back again, this time to March 2007. Margaret Edwards, director of access at the Department of Health, has written to strategic health authority and primary care trust chief executives this week to set out the latest targets on the Choose and Book […]
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One PCT may have met October C+B target
A primary care trust is hoping it will be able to claim the second £100,000 incentive payment for Choose and Book which it plans to distribute to its successful practices. Durham Dales PCT is likely to be the only trust in England to achieve the target which required a PCT to make 50% of its […]
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SMS appointment reminders get language boost
A GP practice in south London which is using text messaging to send out appointment reminders to its patients will soon start sending out SMSs in separate languages. The Patient Care Messaging system, supplied by iPlato and running from the practice’s EMIS database, has been used to send out flu jab prompts to patients at risk as […]
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Pharmacists call for GP booking facility
Pharmacy representatives are calling for a ‘Choose and Book’ style system to be set up between pharmacies and GP practices so that pharmacists can book GP appointments for patients. The idea has been proposed by the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB) as part of its submission to the Department of Health’s consultation […]
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National appointment booking line scales up
The national Choose and Book Appointments Line (CABAL) is now handling about 6000 calls a week with about three quarters of them patients calling about a new appointment. The latest figures from Dilip Chakrabati, national director for booking and choice, show that use of the service is growing rapidly. It is likely to increase further […]
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Choose and Book passes 50,000 mark
More than 6,000 appointments a week are now being made through Choose and Book with the total number of bookings now over 52,000, Jane Cummings, the national director for C&B, has revealed. Speaking at a conference organised by the Health Service Journal, Ms Cummings said this was a marked improvement on July when just 100 […]
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NHS Direct proposes online social care wiki
NHS Direct could soon be setting up an online social care ‘wiki’ that would allow patients to learn from one another about coping with illness and where to obtain support and services. The idea, part of a submission made to the Department of Health’s consultation into its out of hospital care White Paper and announced […]
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Granger says NPfIT in danger of being derailed
The director in charge of the £6.2 billion NHS National Programme for IT has warned that the project is in “grave danger” of being “derailed”, according to leaked Whitehall e-mails. The claim was made by NHS IT director General Richard Granger, in an email to Margaret Edwards, director of access and patient choice, at the […]
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