Thurrock Council to hold poorly rated GP practices to account

Thurrock Council in Essex has said it wants all practices to get at least a 'good’ rating from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and has threatened to hold 'poor performance to account, publicly’.

The council has directed that local public health and CCG officials should develop a scorecard to monitor practices’ performance, and is working with the local Healthwatch group to ‘raise the public’s expectations’ of their local GP surgery.

However, GP leaders have argued that councils do not have the authority to implement such measures.

The news comes as half of GP practices inspected by the CQC in Thurrock were rated as either 'requires improvement’ or 'inadequate’.

James Halden, cabinet member for education and health, said: “We will never shrink form holding poor performance to account, publicly. This is an exciting new phase of ambition for primary care in Thurrock as we show system leadership and work to all providers being ‘good’.”

Under the proposed plans, the council will produce ‘a scorecard based on local metrics to enable all partners to hold poor performance in primary care to account and act as a critical friend to drive improvements’. 

According to the plans, the local Health and Wellbeing Board will use the data 'to nurture peer support amongst GP practices whilst ensuring an effective partner challenge relationship amongst Board members’.

However, Dr Brian Balmer, Essex GP and former GPC negotiator, has opposed the plans: “There’s nothing like giving GPs a good kicking when they are down. The CQC has gone through Essex like a horde of locusts to be quite honest and some practices are still recovering.

“So the council deciding they are going to have a go is par for the course. But it doesn’t have any statutory duty and they will only be involved as much as CCGs and practices allow it – the council is not the regulator. Practices may want to co-operate with the council but if they start asking for things they are not entitled to, we will tell them.”