GPES on track

GP system suppliers are on track to implement the General Practice Extraction Service from this month.

GPES is a centrally managed extraction service that will take data from GP practice systems across England for specific purposes to support better patient care.

Its first major deliverable will be data for the Quality and Outcomes Framework and the Calculating Quality Reporting Service from this month.

The Health and Social Care Information Centre has contracted with five GP clinical system suppliers to develop a secure data extraction service for their customers.

A spokesperson for the centre said all the suppliers were required to complete technical testing followed by a short deployment period using a “test case” with pilot sites.

They then go through a Connecting for Health approval process before the deployment phase can begin.

“All suppliers are on track to reach this milestone and commence their deployment period during April, with CSC TPP the first of the GP IT system suppliers to have received approval,” an HSCIC spokesperson said.

“The next major business objective is to extract and provide data to the CQRS to support payments to GPs under QOF.”

The information centre expects to extract and provide data in July 2013 for information collected by practices in April, May and June 2013.

A TPP spokesperson said it took nine months from signing a contract with the HSCIC to finish GPES technical integration testing in February.

The company hopes to begin piloting the functionality this month. The pilot is expected to last two weeks and include four practices.

The Department of Health is funding the HSCIC to provide GPES up to 2015-16 at a cost of less than £40m.