This story was first published in digitalhealth.net
Support services failure threatens patient safety
Patient safety risks being compromised if systemic failings in primary care support services are not brought under control, the British Medical Association (BMA) has warned.
The BMA recently conducted a survey of local medical committees, which highlighted a range of complaints from GPs including delays in salary reimbursements, transfer of patient records and shortages in basic medical supplies owing to delayed deliveries.
The BMA’s General Practice Committee (GPC) warns that a variety of mounting problems provided by Capita, NHS England and support service provider, were compromising GPs’ ability to provide adequate care to patients.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, GPC chair, said: “These mistakes are directly impacting on the ability of many GPs to provide safe, effective care to their patients. There are in some cases being left without the information they need to know about a patient and the tools to treat them. Precious NHS budgets should also be spent on services and not covering pay that should be automatically covered by the NHS.”
Writing in reply to Nagpaul, Karen Wheeler, NHS England director of transformation, commented: “Capita has delivered an unacceptable level of performance in a number of the primary care service lines, which does not reflect the standard of service that we commissioned Capita to provide.
“To that end, we have been challenging Capita in recent months with increasing levels of scrutiny across every one of the service lines. Progress in some areas has been made but we know that these improvements are not yet being consistently experienced.
“I can assure you of our continued absolute commitment to ensure services improve and I am now more confident that Capita, with our help, is applying the right actions, capability and resource to drive recovery across all service lines.”
Capita took responsibility for delivering support services, under the name Primary Care Support England, on 1 September 2015. It had previously been provided by NHS England.
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