Source · Select Committees · Health and Social Care Committee
Recommendation 6
6
Deferred
Identify mechanisms to distribute GP trainees equitably and incentivise settlement in under-doctored areas.
Recommendation
The Government and NHS England should identify mechanisms to distribute GP trainees more equitably across the country so that under-doctored areas receive a balanced proportion of domestic and international GP trainees. The Government should explore schemes that incentivise GP trainees to settle in the areas they train; this could come in the form of improving opportunities to become GPs with Special Interests, incentivising GPs to join partnerships in understaffed areas, and look to create easier ways for GPs to set up their own practices in primary care “black spots”. (Paragraph 40) 40 The future of general practice
Government Response Summary
The government accepts the recommendation but deflects by addressing the role of receptionists and care navigation training instead of GP trainee distribution and incentives. It commits to investing in a new National Care Navigation Training programme for up to 6,500 staff rolling out from summer 2023, and introducing a Quality and Outcomes Framework module focused on optimising demand in general practice.
Government Response
Deferred
HM Government
Deferred
Accept. We support this recommendation, and we recognise the important role that receptionists, who will often be the first point of contact for patients at their practice, play in general practice teams. Following the pandemic, practices are making greater use of triage, to direct patients to the most appropriate services and professionals first time, and this means that practice receptionists have a crucial role in signposting patients and helping them to navigate new ways of accessing general practice services. As announced in the Delivery Plan for Recovering Access to Primary Care, we are investing in a new National Care Navigation Training programme for up to 6,500 staff rolling out from summer 2023. The training will use the Care Navigation Competency Framework developed by Health Education England and every practice will benefit. Care navigation will be a critical function to help navigate patients to the most appropriate member of the practice team, or to self-care, community pharmacy, administrative teams or other, more appropriate, local services. In the 2023/24 GP contract changes, one of the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) Quality Improvement modules will focus on optimising demand and capacity in general practice with an emphasis on using data to analyse potentially avoidable appointments and build on care navigation and use of wider workforce or local services to reduce pressure on general practice. It is the responsibility of practices themselves to ensure that their receptionists are adequately trained, and NHS England made £35m available between 2016/17 – 2020/21 to Clinical Commissioning Groups (as they then were) to fund training and backfill for GP receptionists and clerical staff. NHS England has developed a programme of e-learning tailored to support both administrative staff and clinical roles in general practices to effectively carry out information gathering, signposting and triage and to support decision making about the appropriateness of different types of consultations and care.