GENERAL PRACTICE

GP referral incentive schemes, January 2009 (2nd February 2009)

In a new document, the British Medical Association (BMA’s) GP Committee offers GPs in England guidance on referral demand management and analysis schemes.

The main conclusions from the guidance are:

• When developed in partnership with doctors, referral management schemes can provide benefits to patients by allowing GPs to discuss non-urgent cases with their colleagues. This can result in patients being offered an alternative course of treatment and GP practices identifying services they can develop for the benefit of their patients. As practices would incur extra costs by taking part in these schemes it is acceptable for them to receive some extra funding.
• It is not acceptable for practices/groups of practices to receive funding or payments for schemes that provide specific financial rewards for reducing referral numbers or costs to certain levels or by certain amounts. These types of target based schemes could result in a perverse incentive to reduce referrals.

Guidance

The Salaried GPs Handbook 2009 (12th February 2009)
This handbook will be sent to all BMA salaried GP members week commencing 23rd February 2009. The Handbook is designed to give employers and employees comprehensive information on the legal and contractual issues facing salaried GPs. A electronic version of the handbook is available for all members now.
Handbook