One PCT may have met October C+B target

A primary care trust is hoping it will be able to claim the second £100,000 incentive payment for Choose and Book which it plans to distribute to its successful practices.

Durham Dales PCT is likely to be the only trust in England to achieve the target which required a PCT to make 50% of its referrals through Choose and Book by the end of October and which it was initially predicted would be missed by every PCT in the country

Dr Stewart Findlay, chairman of the PCT’s professional executive committee and a GP in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, said Department of Health officials were visiting the PCT this week to confirm whether the target had been reached.

He told EHI Primary Care: “We’re waiting for the final figures but if we have achieved the target the money will be passed straight out for those practices who have worked together to earn the reward.”

Dr Findlay said each of the 12 practices in Durham Dales PCT had operated Choose and Book in the way that suited its own working practices with some GPs making bookings in the consulting room while in others patients had been given the booking reference number by practice staff and then made the appointment themselves over the telephone.

He added: “We have had very positive feedback from patients using the system. In our area patients tend to want to use the local hospital so they’re not worried about choice but they like being able to book a time that is convenient for themselves and their families.”

Dr Findlay said he believed the PCT had been able to achieve such high take-up because the 12 practices in the trust were used to working closely together and had a very good working relationship with the trust. All the practices use EMIS and are paperless and share templates and audit data.

Dr Findlay added: “There has also been a lot of peer pressures between the practices to adopt the system so that we can achieve the target.”

Dr Findlay said the PCT was now booking between 64% and 65% of its referrals through Choose and Book but said further progress was limited because not everything was currently able to go through the system. Early teething problems included problems with the hospital’s telephone line which was initially overloaded by the number of patients wanting to use the system.

He added: “It’s certainly not been easy to implement and has involved practices in extra work but I think most practices GPs have delegated a lot of the work to practice staff.”

The October incentive payment is the second in a three-part incentive scheme launched by the health department at the beginning of the year. The first stage, involving practices registering for smartcards, was widely achieved by PCTs but the second and third payments were expected to be missed by every PCT in the country (see EHI Primary Care – Every PCT to Miss Choose and Book target).

The third incentive payment was to be an additional £100,000 paid to PCTs who achieved 80 per cent of referrals through Choose and Book by the end of December.

Sir Nigel Crisp, England NHS chief executive, told the House of Commons public accounts committee in October that Choose and Book was running a year behind schedule.

Latest booking figures on the Connecting for Health website reveal that 56,747 bookings had been made through Choose and Book by the week ending December 6. A total of 9.9 million outpatient appointments are made every year.