The money that sits behind the General Practice Forward View (GPFV) is proving elusive. We seem to be in a place where lots of money has been promised, and in a very British attempt not to appear ungrateful no one is really asking where it is. Instead we are just hoping it will materialise. I have now asked a range of people about it, some in practices, some in CCGs, and some in national roles, and not a single one is clear when or where this money is coming.
So here at Ockham Healthcare towers, we have identified 5 things to watch out for if you want to find the missing millions promised in the GPFV:
- Watch out for the 2017/18 core contract rise. This might sound obvious, but this is actually going be the most important announcement for General Practice, as we will get our first sense of how much of the promised additional £2.4bn will actually arrive into core contracts. In NHS England’s 17.12.15-Allocations.pdf">business plan published in December last year they had indicated a 4.0% uplift for next year, so that would be a good benchmark to monitor the actual rise against.
- Watch out for the publication of the local Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP). NHS transformation money has been given to the STP areas, and in the guidance sent to them it said the allocated funding included money for, “taking forward the programmes set out in GPFV and delivering extended GP access”. This means GPFV money has been given to the STP areas, and it is their job to say how they are going to use it.
- Watch out for how much extra investment goes into the new MCP contract. We now know the multispecialty community provider (MCP) contract is not for General Practice alone, it is for all the providers of community services in an area. If investing in the MCP contract is used synonymously for investing in General Practice, there is a high risk that only a proportion of that money will find its way through to individual practices.
- Watch out for your CCGs commissioning intentions and plan for next year. The RCGP are optimistic about this. They believe that over the next 5 years CCGs will invest 10%-20% more in General Practice, reaching somewhere between £184 and £368M by 2020/21. Very crudely that is £1-£2M extra per CCG, which would mean growth of £200k-£400k each year. So review next year’s plan, and see if you can find it.
- Watch out for next year’s Better Care Fund (BCF) plan. Again, this was trailed in the GPFV and the RCGP have picked up on it, thinking that more money will come from that fund into General Practice. Next year’s BCF plans will indicate whether the RCGP’s faith in them is justified.
Details from each of these areas will be released in the next 6 months, which means soon (hopefully!) we will know exactly how the money is going to come to General Practice. Then we can make a better assessment of the impact it is going to make.
One tip for practices looking to maximise their own share of the money. There are a lot of different pots of funding. As a minimum we know that practices can potentially access pots of funding for: practice resilience programme; clinical pharmacists; practice manager development; practice nurse development; CCG practice transformational support; on-line consultation implementation; releasing time for patients programme; mental health workers; and further capital allocations. Get together with other practices and identify or employ someone whose job is to look out for pots of money that become available and write bids for all the practices. It won’t take long before they have already paid for themselves!
1 Comment
This is such a useful article. It is difficult trying to keep track of all the small pots of money available. As a Practice Manager something else I tend to struggle with, is how to apply for these funding pots it is not always clear!