National Commissioning Board

GGI welcomes the debate on giving patients the choice of GP. This to date under-played element of the reforms will be, we feel, one of the most significant changes in the NHS and critical to sharpening up the system as a whole.

Our recent report on long-term conditions (put link in here) identified how, for increasing numbers of patients, the NHS will become an increasingly apparent partner in their life journey. The choice of which GP list a patient is on won't be just one of geographic co-incidence. New technology such as telehealth, GP specialisation and good customer care will all become critical to patients as they exert their own power over how they will manage life with a long-term condition.

The better GP Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) are already thinking through how they up the quality of all GPs within the CCG, but are doing this through the lens of resource usage. With patients able to choose which list they are on CCGs will have to think about how they develop choice within their own local area for primary care as well as referred services. For example, it will be in the CCGs interest to make sure that particular practices develop a good name for key long-term conditions. CCGs will also need to encourage better customer care amongst their GP practices: cases where patients have been unreasonably struck of GP lists and complaints about GPs will be of interest to the local CCG as well as the National Commissioning Board that will hold the GP contract itself.

Interesting new joint service offerings could also arise from patient choice of GP. For example, a GP practice with an interest in diabetes care could become allied to a service provider that is better able to offer both diabetic specialist services and also other general services where patients with diabetes need particular care and attention: wound care, for example. Another exciting possibility would be that GPs extensively using telehealth for patients with a long-term condition, or practices offering postal pharmacy services, might become a good choice - even if located at some distance to the patient's home.

For further details see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-15471034