GP practices are to receive a new incentive to boost patient continuity and will be required to publish a ‘patient charter’ setting out the standard of care they are contracted to provide.
Practices will now be paid to identify those that ‘would benefit most from continuity of care’ via amendments to the Capacity and Access Improvement (CAIP) payment), according to 2025/26 GP contract details unveiled on Friday.
And NHS England (NHSE) said it will publish a patient charter which will set out the standards a patient ‘can expect from their practice’, as outlined in the GP contract. The charter will then be publicly available and published on practice websites.
‘This will improve transparency for patients and make it easier for them to know how practices will handle their request and what to expect from their practice,’ the commissioner said.
The Department of Health and Social Care confirmed that the charter will be a ‘publicly accessible document’, which sets out ‘in black and white’ what patients can expect from their GPs and practices and will also set out what to do if patient expectations ‘aren’t met’ and what is expected of patients.
According to a letter sent by NHSE primary care director Dr Amanda Doyle to practices, the charter will include guidance on how patients can contract their practice as well as the requirements for practices to keep their online consultation tool open for the duration of core hours for non-urgent appointment requests, medication queries and admin requests.
‘This will be subject to necessary safeguards in place to avoid urgent clinical requests being erroneously submitted online. Guidance will be displayed on practice websites and reflected in the wording of the patient charter,’ she added.
NHS England has been asked for more detail on what exactly will be included in the charter.
Dr Doyle’s letter also said that in 2025/26 the Capacity and Access Improvement (CAIP) payment will continue (worth £87.6 million) but will change from three domains down to two.
It added: ‘One domain will continue to focus on supporting modern general practice access (worth £58.4 million) while the other (worth £29.2 million) will incentivise PCNs to risk stratify their patients in accordance with need – including to identify those that would benefit most from continuity of care.’
A deal ‘in principle’ for the contract has been agreed by the BMA, and will see almost £800m invested into the global sum, as well as other contractual changes.
The BMA’s GP committee said that the deal is subject to an agreement, in writing by next month, from the Government for a wholesale renegotiation of the GMS contract within this parliamentary term.
In 2023, health secretary Wes Streeting said GP practices would be given incentives to offer patients continuity of care, indicating that poorer performing practices would receive less money.
And at the start of last year, Labour promised to remove ‘burdensome’ bureaucracy from GPs, but asked for better continuity of care in return.
NHS England had also hinted before Labour’s election win that continuity of care may be included in future contracts, but sought to assure GPs that this wouldn’t come with ‘silly measures and boxes to tick’.
A version of this story first appeared on our sister title Pulse.
