NHSE/I has written to practices to outline amendments to the contract, as agreed in our last round of negotiations in February this year, as well as extending/amending some of the amendments that have been made in order to assist with managing the pandemic. The Friends & Family Test remains suspended, as does the requirement for individual patient consent for electronic repeat dispensing.
NHSE/I has listened to our concerns and relaxed the requirement for practices to make appointments available for NHS111 to directly book. The maximum that should be made available remains 1 per 500 patients, but practices can now only make available what is necessary to meet demand. This may therefore be covered by the previous arrangement of 1 per 3000 patients. We are aware that most practices do not see many of the slots available being booked into, so practices can now reduce this and only make available what they believe is required. Practices should though monitor this to ensure they are offering sufficient opportunity for direct booking.
Some of the contractual agreements made earlier this year for 2020/21 implementation have been delayed due to the pandemic, but the ones that commence from 1 October include a contractual requirement for practices to participate in the Appointments in General Practice data collection, participating in the NHS Digital Workforce Collection, new measures around list cleansing and patient removal and assignment, as well as a relaxation of subcontracting arrangements for the PCN DES.