PCT IT service agreement still missing

A service level agreement to guarantee the level of IT service practices should receive from primary care trusts under the new GMS contract has still to be published, almost 18 months after the new contract has taken effect.

GP representatives are blaming the delay on the Department of Health and have written to the department calling on it to publish the service level agreement as soon as possible.

Dr Paul Cundy, chairman of the IT sub-committee of the British Medical Association’s GP committee, said the delay was unacceptable.

He told EHI Primary Care: “We are receiving queries from GPs who want to know where this is and we are awaiting a response from the Department of Health about why this hasn’t been published yet.”

The new GMS contract transferred the responsibility for buying and maintaining IT systems from practices to primary care organisations. The SLA is intended to ensure that the transfer of ownership of IT systems and equipment from practices to PCOs takes place in accordance within nationally agreed guidelines, while service levels are maintained or improved. The new contract states that the SLA should provide practices with nationally approved assurances on training, maintenance and support.

Dr Cundy said the SLA had been finalised as far as the GPC was concerned and it could see no reason why it should not be published.

The move to switch IT ownership from GPs to PCOs has led to concerns from some GPs that PCOs lack the funds to invest in the IT practices need. There have also been concerns that practices are being prevented from using third party software used for the day to day running of their businesses when ownership of their IT systems has moved to their PCO.

At this year’s national local medical committees’ conference in June a motion was passed calling on the service level agreement to be published within a month.

Dr Colin Patterson, chairman of North Cumbria LMC, proposed the motion that also claimed that the safe provision of primary care was being jeopardised by the failure of PCOs to maintain IT hardware.

In June he told EHI Primary Care that his practice desperately needed a new computer system but had been told by its PCO that it would have to wait until later in the year.

He added: “We are in a situation where we have computers that crash every two or three days and although that’s not acceptable our PCO does not have the money or the time to do anything about it.”

Links

LMCs to debate no confidence motion in PCOs IT

http://www.ehiprimarycare.com/news/item.cfm?ID=1247

Investing in general practice – the new general medical services contract

http://www.bma.org.uk/ap.nsf/Content/investinggp