Healthwatch ask General Practice Committee for transparency on additional charges
The General Practitioners Committee (GPC) recently met with Healthwatch England to discuss charges that GPs can make for work not covered by their contract.
Whilst the patient group understands the reasons behind charging, their main concern was a lack of consistency between practices and sometimes even within practices.
The GPC explained that the BMA is not able to set fee levels for additional work and is expressly prohibited from doing so, but agreed to remind practices of current guidance on charging. These guidelines can be found here:
It may also be helpful for practices to display information about fees and the reasons behind them where they can easily be seen by patients.
Last updated : 14 Oct 2015Extended hours DES update (23 Oct 2017)
The 2017/18 changes to the GP contract included the condition that meant practices who regularly close for a half day, on a weekly basis, will not ordinarily qualify to deliver...Identifying patients living with frailty (23 Oct 2017)
Since July 2017 there has been a new contractual requirement for practices to focus on the identification and management of patients living with frailty. Practices are required to use appropriate...Remember that your practice needs a CQC registered manager (23 Oct 2017)
Remember that Section 33 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 states that it is a legal requirement for practices to have a registered manager with the CQC (Care...New GMS1 form - use now (23 Oct 2017)
All practices should have received new GMS1 forms to use from this month onwards. The new forms include supplementary questions to be completed by overseas...LMC patient engagement project wins award at RCGP conference (19 Oct 2017)
Londonwide LMCs’ Patient Engagement Project (PEP) was launched in July 2016 with a focus on supporting practices in fostering and developing Patient Participation Groups (PPGs). The experiences and views of...Working as a team helps combat workload stress (19 Oct 2017)
Alison Dalal, practice manager at the Paddington Green Health Centre, shares her top tips. As surveys show, working in general practice can be a stressful business and as the workload...Jeremy Hunt pledges ‘state-backed’ indemnity (19 Oct 2017)
Speaking at this month’s Royal College of General Practitioners conference Jeremy Hunt announced he is planning to introduce a state-backed indemnity scheme from April 2019. It will cover all GPs...NHS chief says networking may be answer to working at scale (19 Oct 2017)
NHS Chief Executive Simon Stevens told the Health Select Committee earlier this month that “more networked approaches” can also be an answer to working ‘at scale’. This places the NHS...BMA issues advice on premises fees (20 Sep 2017)
As NHS Property Services emails practices with invoices and/or a letter from Mark Day, Chief Financial Officer at Community Health Partnerships the BMA has issued advice to practices. The covering...Londonwide LMCs' September 2017 newsletter (20 Sep 2017)
Guidance
We provide expert guidance for practices in our guidance section, as well as an archive of other materials you may find useful.
GP Support
Contact our GP Support team if you need help or advice.
The team provide professional and pastoral support to GPs and practice teams on a broad range of issues.
follow us on...
