DH: GPSoC needs no new funding

The GP Systems of Choice scheme has been extended without the need for additional funding, the Department of Health has said.

The DH announced last week that it had agreed to extend the scheme until March 2013 to give GP practices’ continuity while it agreed who would be responsible for IT services in the new NHS.

This week, a DH spokesperson told EHI Primary Care: “No additional funding is being provided as this is within the original approved funding initially provided for GPSoC. The costs will continue to be met from budget allocations based on the existing approved funding.”

The DH published a revised price list last week but told EHI Primary Care there was not a general contract renegotiation although CSC had reduced four specific charges relating to deploying TPP SystmOne to a new practice.

The DH added: “GPSoC pricing is published on a public facing website to inform practices and PCTs of the relative costs of their systems and associated services. This encourages competition between suppliers on the framework as suppliers are able to offer price reductions as long as they apply to all practices who wish to take up the relevant service.”

TPP said it had reduced its charges for new practices after completing nearly 300 data migrations, which meant improvements in efficiency and a reduction in the data ‘cutover’ period to three days.

The TPP revised costs mean the deployment service has been reduced from £7603 to £1990 for practices who select the train the trainer option plus reduced costs for data migration from £3719 to £1500 and reduced costs for migration of deducted patients and legacy audit trails onto DVD.

TPP said the new prices applied to all practices outside the North, Midlands and East that sign up for SystmOne from 10 March. In the North, Midland and East practices selecting SystmOne are supplied through the local service provider contract.

Last week, the DH said it planned to replaced around 445 local call-off agreements currently in place for GPSoC with six national call-off agreements with the GPSoC suppliers – CSC supplying TPP’s SystmOne, EMIS, Healthy Software, INPS, iSoft and Microtest.