CfH pushing for data standard in GP contract

Connecting for Health wants data standards for GPs to be included in the nGMS contract from next year.

Negotiations on revisions to the contract for 2008 have begun and CfH has asked the Department of Health and NHS Employers to include data standards into any revised agreement.

GPs can currently be rewarded for meeting data standards through a two year directed enhanced service for IM&T but this comes to an end in March 2008 and CfH wants to see a more permanent replacement.

Dr Gillian Braunold, joint GP clinical lead for CfH, told EHI Primary Care that she hoped the British Medical Association’s (BMA) General Practitioner Committee (GPC) would be supportive of such a move.

She added: “It’s my fervent wish that the GPC are not difficult about this because these are standards that we wish to see persist and standards that are worth having.”

Data accreditation standards are one of four elements in the current DES and were agreed with the BMA to deliver “data fit for sharing”.

However, according to PRIMIS+, the data quality organisation that provide training for the DES, some primary care trusts have only just identified their approach to the DES and have had difficulty recruiting assessors.

This has also led to some PCTs recruiting non-clinical assessors even though it is a recommendation of the Data Accreditation Board that IM&T DES assessors should ideally have a clinical background.

Dr Braunold said: “Because the DES is going to finish in March PCTs are not wanting to put the effort and energy into recruiting assessors which is why we want to see a long term commitment in the contract.”

Dr Braunold said her preference would be for the standards to be included in the Quality and Outcomes Framework but this would mean an agreement across all four countries. A possible alternative would be a replacement long term DES.

Figures from PRIMIS+ show that by the middle of last week 2,470 practices from 117 PCTs had uploaded data to CHART online, an e-audit tool developed by PRIMIS+ to allow GPs to assess the quality of their data as part of the DES.

Accreditation under the DES, worth 44p per patient, is a three stage process involving a practice submission, quantitative analysis of data taken from the practice and a visit from an assessor to provide necessary qualitative analysis.