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With the Bolton Quality Contract, Bolton CCG has invested an additional £3m in General Practice and provided a guaranteed income per patient. In turn this has helped them to tackle some of their most pressing problems including access and the patient experience through incentives for the delivery of a set of agreed standards. The contract has been a huge success and effectively funded itself in the first year. Ben talks to Su Long, the Accountable Officer at Bolton CCG, to understand more about how the contract was developed, how it works and how its success is being measured.

Show Notes

Su explains how the new contract in Bolton came about (58secs)

The local GPs are engaged in developing the contract and setting the new standards (2mins 02secs)

The standards aim to improve access (2mins 57secs)

The Bolton Quality Contract: changing the way practices are funded to incentivise achievement of the standards (3mins 54secs)

How does it work with QOF and enhanced services? (4mins 47secs)

What about the practices that were already funded at a higher level? (5secs 27secs)

For how long does the contract run? (6mins 39secs)

How is the new contract funded? (7mins 02secs)

The new contract aims to pay for itself in the first year (7mins 25secs)

The Board recognised that investing in General Practice was essential (7mins 55secs)

The process took just nine months to establish (8mins 38secs)

How is the additional funding paid to practices (9mins 50secs)

What should measure and how? (10mins 32secs)

Payments come in each quarter (12mins 15secs)

Data is an issue (12mins 46secs)

40 standards is perhaps too many! (13mins 29secs)

What were the results in the first year? (13mins 42secs)

….60,000 additional appointment slots in primary care…and more (14mins 05secs)

…improvements in the Friends and Family test, prescribing and take-up of screening… (14mins 48secs)

…successfully improving capacity (16mins 04secs)

How the practices have responded (16mins 57secs)

The standard setting is very robust (17mins 40 secs)

The investment has paid for itself (18mins 50secs)

Reviewing and developing the contract (19mins 06secs)

Advice for other CCGs (20mins 04secs)

Your CCG colleagues might think you are mad to take the risk! (20mins 45secs)

Investment in capacity in General Practice is essential for the whole health system (21mins 27secs)

A paper describing the Bolton Quality Contract in some detail can be found here