600 practices to benefit from £10m vulnerable practice fund, Pulse reports

According to Pulse, around 300 vulnerable practices across the UK could receive a share of the £10 million fund pledged by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

The plans were revealed by leaked reports from the NHS South West regional team which show 17 practices have been identified for support from the area’s chunk of the fund (£273,000), working out at an average of £16,000 each.

If the same level of support is spread across England, it is expected around 620 practices will benefit from the fund, covering around 3.7 million patients.

However, the General Practitioners Committee (GPC) has claimed that £10 million will not be enough and the requirement for GPs to match the funding they are provided with is likely to exclude the most vulnerable.

One of the selected practices, Victoria Park Practice, in Somerset maintained that it was already having its funding cut despite operating in one of the country’s most deprived areas.

Paul Cawkwell, the practice’s manager, said: “NHS England is not doing anything to sustain us, they are taking money off us.”

GPC deputy chair Dr Vautrey also told Pulse that the process of identifying vulnerable practices ’could be more complex than the NHS England plans have intimated’.

He said: “There are many practices who could fall within this, but you recognise there’s a limited amount of resource and there’s a big issue that practices have to match funding."