Responsibility for paying Collaborative Fees

Email correspondence is copied below for confirmation that the NHS England local Area Team will continue to make payments to practices under the collaborative arrangements for services provided to the local authority, as per their obligation under the Health and Social Care Act.

You should continue to insist that all requests from local authority officers or their agents for practices to provide these services are accompanied by a City Council Medical Fee Claim for with section 1 appropriately completed by the requestor. I appreciate the on-going running sore of council employees being totally ignorant of the correct procedure. John Denley, Consultant in Public Health at the council, has recently been co-opted, in line with the LMC constitution, as the LMC’s Public Health representative. I shall be meeting with John shortly and endeavour to find a solution to this perennial problem.

Bob
I have discussed this with Karen and notwithstanding that there may well be a long term solution where funds may be transferred to other organisations in the future, at this time we confirm that the Area team will continue to make these payments
Regards
Donna

Subject: Responsibility for paying Collaborative Fees.
Importance: High

Dear Karen/Donna
When we met some time back you promised to look into the payments for the provision by GP practices of collaborative services, that is those services commissioned by the Council but for which the NHS has a legal obligation, under the Health and Social Care Act, to pay.
As you know, prior to the reorganisation the responsibility for these payments clearly and explicitly rested with PCOs.There has been considerable on-going confusion, both nationally and locally, since April as, although the HSCA confirms the NHS Commissioning Board’s continued responsibility for payment, it appears the appropriate funding stream cannot be located and may (or may not) have been transferred to CCGs or just generally lost in the re-organisational chaos.
Discussions between the GPC negotiators and NHS England have confirmed that, whilst such confusion remains, and notwithstanding that a longer term solution must be found, which could include explicit transfer of funding for these services to either the CCGs or the local authority, Area Teams must continue to make these payments. This is in line with obligations under the Act regardless of whether or not you are able to identify the funding.
I should be most grateful if you could confirm that you will indeed continue to fund these services, in line with your statutory responsibilities, pending clarity on the arrangementsin the longer term. Historically in Birmingham GP claim forms authorised by the City Council have been sent to the Birmingham Primary Care Shared Services agency for payment.
I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the importance of reaching an urgent resolution to this matter, concerning as it does vital areas of work such as the provision of safeguarding reports and case conference attendances, fostering and adoption medicals, medical assessments for sectioning under the Mental Health Act and many other areas, none of which fall within GPs contractual obligations.

Dr. Robert Morley
Birmingham Local Medical Committee