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How to win GP contracts and funding

Doctor consultation

If you are a surgery or general practice looking to win substantial contracts or funding, it can be a daunting prospect, particularly if you are an already over-worked GP or Practice Manager struggling for time.

What types of GP contracts can you bid for?

APMS (Alternative Provider Medical Services) contracts are regularly put out to tender by the NHS commissioners – usually Integrated Care Boards or local authorities – every week on the Government’s Find a Tender website. This type of contact enables private sector companies to provide primary care services. They can also be used as a vehicle to commission contracts for services that are outside the scope of core general practice such as helping individuals or groups not signed up to surgeries, for example asylum seekers or the homeless.

PMS (Personal Medical Services) contracts were hugely popular and generally facilitated by NHS England and Clinical Commissioning Groups but these are being phased out in favour of a new Integrated Care Provider (ICP) contract to allow for a better integration of services.

GMS (General Medical Services) contracts are the national standard GP contract.

For more information on the types of GP contracts, see The Kings Fund website.

We tend to work more on bids for APMS contracts and, in partnership with PMA, are here to support and guide GPs and Practice Managers through the tender bid process.

In fact, we have bid on more than 300 health and social care contracts with a win rate of 93%, securing £1 billion in contracts and funding for our clients.

Is there any general practice funding available in the UK?

The latest NHS England waiting list figures, up to November 2023, stand at 7.6 million. That’s 7.6 million people who are all waiting to start elective/non urgent treatments in England.

While this has dropped ever so slightly from 7.7 million in October 2023, it is still much larger than the 7.2 million it was just a year ago in November 2022.

According to The Lancet, NHS England’s recovery plan aims to increase capacity by up to 30%, compared with pre-pandemic levels, over the next three years through a range of measures, including extra staff and increased use of the independent sector.

Due to this significant, unprecedented pressure on our healthcare system, we anticipate that there will be additional funding opportunities for GP Practices and Primary Care Networks (PCNs) made available by NHS England.

The General Practice Improvement Programme (GPIP), for example, provides nationally funded support for practices and primary care networks (PCNs) to implement modern general practice.

There is also funding available to GP practices to help them with going digital, such as cloud-based telephone systems, online consultation software and new appointment booking systems.

Find out more on the NHS website.

If you need help with winning GP contracts or funding, get in touch with K Low Consulting today to see how we can assist you. Contact info@klowconsulting.com or give us a call on 0330 133 1041.

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Integrated care systems – what direction are things moving in?

Integrated Care Systems

In 2019, the NHS set out plans to revolutionise Integrated Care Systems (ICSs) as part of its Long Term Plan.

The proposals included:

  • Giving people more control over their own health and the care they receive
  • Encouraging more collaboration between GPs, their teams and community services, as ‘primary care networks’ to increase the services they can provide jointly
  • Increasing the focus on NHS organisations working with their local partners, such as Councils, as ‘Integrated Care Systems’, to plan and deliver services which meet the needs of their communities

Since the plan was first published in January 2019, health and social care are both areas that have been massively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, making the idea of a care system that is better integrated and gives patients more choice and control over their own healthcare sound almost impossible at this point in time.

In February 2022, a white paper was published entitledIntegration and innovation: working together to improve health and social care for all, which sets out legislative proposals for a new Health and Care Bill, which will make the legislation set out in the paper become law.

The paper held the pandemic up as an example of what could be achieved if everyone in the health and care systems pulled together. It also recognised that there was a lot to be done to rebuild these decimated systems to not only get them back to where they were pre-pandemic, but to better than they have ever been.

How exactly will it work?

According to the February white paper, ‘instead of working independently, every part of the NHS, public health and social care system should continue to seek out ways to connect, communicate and collaborate so that the health and care needs of people are met’ and ‘health and care services, local government, NHS bodies, and others (will) work ever more closely together…with common purpose and in partnership’.

The Bill sets up a series of Integrated Care Systems to cover England. The ICSs will include an Integrated Care Board (ICB) which will assume the commissioning responsibilities currently undertaken by clinical commissioning groups. There will also be an Integrated Care Partnership (ICP), a secondary part of the system intended to give a voice to the wider health and care community.

Place level commissioning within an integrated care system will align geographically to a local authority boundary and the Better Care Fund (BCF) plan will provide a tool for agreeing priorities. This will be further supported by other measures including improvements in data sharing and enshrining a ‘triple aim’ for NHS organisations to support better health and wellbeing for everyone, better quality of health services for all, and sustainable use of NHS resources.

The future

The new legislative proposals in the paper that will be upheld by the Health and Care Bill ‘aim to build on the incredible collaborations we have seen through COVID’ and ‘shape a system that’s better able to serve people in a fast-changing world’.

The Bill also builds upon the original proposals made in the Long Term Plan and also looks at issues such as ‘removing transactional bureaucracy’ to make purchasing decisions easier, making better use of technology to support staff and patient care, and pledges to address staff shortages.

These are all potential opportunities from a tender or Framework point of view.

But, with a more ‘integrated’ system comes more partners and organisations. With the NHS, local authorities, the voluntary sector and others all working together to provide health and social care products and services in local areas, who will act as the Commissioner in a potential tender situation? If you are accepted onto one Framework, will you be eligible to join others?

One thing is for sure, tenders in health and social care are changing and we need to stay abreast of these changes.

Here are some suggested links for further reading:

For more information or to discuss how we can work with your organisation to help you win and manage health and social care contracts, contact us today on 0330 1331 041 or info@klowconsulting.com.