GP IT funds sitting with area teams

GP IT funding of £186m has gone to NHS England’s area teams, which are working with local commissioners to verify individual budgets.

NHS England announced that it was devolving responsibility for GP IT to clinical commissioning groups in June last year.

A spokesperson for NHS England said financial planning and budget allocations had now been devolved to its 27 area teams.

“An indicative budget of £186 million has been allocated for GP IT and other primary care IT services. The budget available for primary care IT in 2013-14 matches levels in 2012-13,” the spokesperson said.

EHI established in February that the total allocation would be £186m, spread between 211 CCGs. This figure was based on reported spend by primary care trusts on GP IT.

However, a document released under the Freedom of Information Act revealed a massive disparity in reported expenditure nationwide.

The ‘GP IT Summary’ showed that Wiltshire PCT, which had a population of 450,000, reported spending of just £225,000 annually, or 50p per person.

In contrast, Liverpool PCT was reported as spending £4.2m a year for a population of 450,000, equaling nearly £10 per patient.

The disparity prompted a negotiator for the BMA’s GP Committee, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, to warn of a “postcode lottery” of IT support in primary care.

He said CCGs should have an opportunity to check the reported budget for their area and verify its accuracy.

NHS England said its area teams were working with CCGs to “verify budget requirements and secure appropriate service level agreements with IT providers”. However, the overall budget of £186m was set for the year.

Dr Nagpaul said CCGs did not have any direct control over the GP IT resource.

“It’s important to recognise that there’s no reality to the government’s statement that GP IT has been devolved to CCGs. It hasn’t. It’s actually been devolved to area teams and they are clearly not in control of the IT budget,” he said.

He was concerned that PCTs had provided information about their GP IT spend when they were being run-down.

“Organisations were under-staffed, so it is important to ensure that the overall budget is accurate,” explained Dr Nagpaul.

In many cases the CCG boundaries were different to those of the PCT, making it especially important for commissioners to verify that the funding level for their area was appropriate.

Dr Paul Cundy, joint chairman of the BMA and RCGP’s joint IT committee, said NHS England had devolved IT funding to the local area teams, but the message from CCGs was that they had not received the money.

“I would remind CCGs that the IT operating framework from the NHS Commissioning Board confirmed that GP IT spending would be ring-fenced for the next two years,” he said.

Dr Cundy added that there needed to be a much clearer process and a more standardised mechanism for working out GP IT expenditure across the country.

“I’m concerned that there seems to be such a lot of variation,” he explained.

“What this suggests to me is that PCTs aren’t accounting for what they have got in the same way.

“It’s very clear that there’s not a ten-fold difference in use of IT across the country, but there’s a ten-fold difference in funding levels and it’s all to do with the fact that they haven’t filled in their forms properly.

“If the CCGs get the money they want it will be fine, but we don’t know until CCGs get the money,” Dr Cundy said.