Bulletin 05.11.2013

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Bulletin 05.11.2013

QOF Achievement Data
The 2012/13 QOF achievement and prevalence data have been published by the HSCIC, including a statistical bulletin, an online database and a set of detailed data tables. The average achievement decreased from 96.9% in 11/12 by 0.8 % to 96.1 %.

QOF Business Rules v27
Version 27 of the QOF Business Rules have now been published on the PCC website.

Improving General Practice: A Call to Action
The NHS England review of general practice is ongoing. The consultation aims to gather views on how general practice can best meet the challenges of an ageing population, increased patient demand and growing recruitment and retention problems. NHS England has also said it wishes to address inequality of and patient dissatisfaction with access to GP services. Both the GPC at a national level and the LMC at a local level are coordinating a response to the consultation, but individual GPs can also provide a response. You can fill in the online survey form on the NHS England website.

CCG Constitutions and Conflicts of Interest
The GPC has issued these FAQs and updated guidance on CCG constitutions (focusing on what to do if you are unhappy with something in your CCG constitution and the process for requesting changes) and conflicts of interest (providing advice for GPs as commissioners, covering issues such as the GMC guidance for doctors in management or commissioning roles and how to manage conflicts of interests when commissioning services from member GP practices).

Read Code for Dementia DES
The Read codes for the Dementia DES are available in the version 2 enhanced services guidance. NHS Employers have advised that although the guidance refers to the October Read code release, which is not yet available, practices should be able to use these on their systems already. However, the codes may not yet be picked up as part of reporting until system suppliers have put the necessary templates in place. The Read codes in italics in the guidance should be the correct codes, as there have been no changes since the publication of the enhanced services guidance, but they had to include a line around the possibility of change in case they did.

Local Enhanced Services
During 2012-13, NHS England guidance stated that all existing local enhanced service contracts should be extended into 2013-14, in order to provide stability during the transition period as PCTs transferred commissioning responsibility to CCGs. The guidance recommended that the contracts be extended with a six month review clause, so that CCGs, if they wished, could choose to change or decommission services during the current commissioning cycle. In addition, all local enhanced services (now referred to as community-based services) commissioned by CCGs would need to be contracted using the NHS Standard contract from April 2014. As such, our CCGs are reviewing current LES contracts and making decisions about services to be commissioned for 2014-15, using the NHS Standard Contract. We would urge you to read the GPC FAQs on the NHS Standard Contract. NHS England has this further details guidance on how to contract using the standard contract.

Firearms Policy
The GPC has published this updated interim version of the firearms policy.

BMA 2014 Research Grants
The BMA was among the first of the professional bodies to award grants and prizes to encourage and further medical research. Today, ten research grants are administered under the auspices of the Board of Science, all funded by legacies left to the BMA. Grants totalling approximately £500,000 are awarded annually. Applications are invited from medical practitioners and/or research scientists, for research in progress or prospective research. The 2014 research grants will be available to apply for online from 10 December this year. The application deadline is 14 March 2014 at 5pm. Subject specifications for each grant vary. For example, in 2014, research areas range from rheumatism and arthritis, cardiovascular disease and cancer to neurological disorders and clinical outcome measures. For more information on the grants on offer in 2014 and details of how to apply follow this linkPlease disseminate this information as widely as possible, in particular to any potential applicants. If you have any questions about the BMA research grants, or would like to receive alerts about them, please contact Hugh Garnett at info.sciencegrants@bma.org.uk or telephone 020 7383 6755.

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