General practice will now have to pay 2.5% more Care Quality Commission (CQC) fees.
Following a consultation, the CQC has published updated fees that will be paid by providers from 1 April 2014.
All services registered with the CQC must pay fees which cover the cost of registration and inspection.
Providers of primary medical services from one location will have their fee calculated based on how many patients they have registered.
For practices with under 5,000 patients, the fee is £565. Between 5,001 and 10,000 the fee is £666. Between 10,001 and 15,000 the fee is £770. And for practices with more than 15,000 patients the fee is £870.
However, walk-in centres will have a flat of £870, regardless of the number of patients.
Practices with a number of locations also have varying fees (see table below).
The changes have been approved by the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt.
CQC chief executive, David Behan, said: “Our purpose is to ensure people receive services which are safe and of high quality. Monitoring, inspecting and regulating services has a cost attached, which is met in part by the fees providers pay. We have listened to the views that were expressed during the consultation, and have made a modest increase to fees, and introduced new fee bands to the care home and dental sectors based on the feedback we received.”
“We will continue to review our fees in consultation with stakeholders whilst ensuring we are delivering value for money. We would like to thank the providers, organisations and individuals who took part in the consultation.”
CQC will carry out another public consultation in the autumn of this year, which will consider the next set of changes to the fees scheme for 2015/16.
More information on the fee changes is available on the CQC website.
