A Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) could be facing additional costs of more than £10.6 million in order to continue funding Babylon’s GP at Hand practice.
Dr Jefferies & Partners in Fulham, south-west London, began offering the Babylon-powered service in November 2017.
The free service promises to cut GP waiting times by allowing patients to book appointments and talk to their doctor through their smartphone.
Papers presented to the NHS Hammersmith and Fulham CCG Primary Care Commissioning Committee on 20 March reveal that the number of patients registered with the practice has leaped from 2,500 in April 2017 to 24,651 as of 5 March 2018.
This means the practice has seen an average of 4,000 registrations a month.
This recorded growth prompted the CCG to calculate the additional costs as a result of more patients registering.
The papers reveal that if the current trend of 4,000 patients registering a month continues, the total additional cost to the CCG could surpass £10.6 million.
On the other hand, even if there is no further growth, there will still be additional costs of more than £5.4 million.
The papers also state that the “list size growth associated with the GP at Hand practice” has not been allocated in the CCG’s funding for 2018/19.
This has created “significant cost pressures”, which resulted in the CCG being unable to balance its finances.
A spokeswoman for Hammersmith and Fulham CCG said: “The impact on the CCG is primarily due to the growth of the number of patients registering with the practice, which has increased the CCGs registered list by approximately 10% since April last year.
“As CCG funding is based on the GP registered population at the start of the year, it did not take into account or anticipate the large growth in the numbers of patients the CCG is now responsible for and there is no mechanism currently in place that will automatically increase the CCG allocation in year.”
The papers reveal the CCG has therefore contacted NHS England London and “is exploring options to enable in year adjustments to its allocation” however the spokeswoman told Digital Health News that “there is presently no mechanism in place for a CCG to make in-year changes to its core or primary care allocations”.
A GP at Hand spokesman said: “What has happened is that a different CCG is now paying for patient care. Historically, when patients – who are now with GP at Hand – were registered at their previous practice, the CCG responsible for that practice would have borne the costs of the NHS care.
“Now the costs fall to Hammersmith & Fulham CCG.”
NHS England recently issued a tender for an independent evaluation GP at Hand after the national body lodged a ‘formal objection’ to a further roll-out of the service.
The £250,000 contract is due to start on 1 June 2018 and end 30 May 2019.
3 April 2018 @ 08:59
The system cost is Zero so the whole article is flawed. For every new patient registration costs there is another CCG that will see costs reduce.
I do accept that this may lead to destabilisation locally but the GPs that Babylon use are all over the Country.
I love the technology at the heart of this, it’s a shame this service offering has ruined any chance of it being rolled out to the benefit of patients AND practices country wide.
Where I think the company are being disingenuous to the NHS is that they were charging about £50 per patient for this as a private service (less if via a corporate sign-up). Now they, via Jeffrey, get in excess of £120 per patient for essentially the same offering.
26 March 2018 @ 09:12
The idea is good but not had a great take up by GPs. This does show there is a need which might make CCGs work harder at implementing something similar. Pitty it has taken a seriously flawed product to highlight the need and an additional £250k for a commission to evaluate. i imagine not many who have registered do realise they are no longer with their original GP, they soon will when they require a physical appointment. I did asked them how they prescribe but didnt get an answer, not sure they can use EPS?
22 March 2018 @ 16:24
I wonder how many of the 22,000 patients who are now registered with a GP Practice in London – actually know and understand that they have now de-registered from their GP Practice and are now registered with a practice they will probably never attend. I also wonder how many patients have had their care interupted by using this service.
22 March 2018 @ 13:18
I think this shows how out of touch is the CCG with its patients.
22 March 2018 @ 22:27
you are correct, nhs leading ORGs are out of touch with nhs provider ORGs, the provider ORGs are taking all the pressure
21 March 2018 @ 18:32
Ok the finances are all FUBAR but clearly a lot of people clearly want this service. Who knew?
21 March 2018 @ 14:44
Although this looks like a good innovative idea, it is FATALLY FLAWED. What this shows is that the guinea pig practice will receive a windfall of nearly £2m!!! in return for 22,000 patient registrations for patient’s who we know will be likely to be low volume patients who simply cba to participate in the normal, local GP consultation capacity model… or in other words, me first queue jumpers. This practice and these patients have diverted £2m away from practices who now have to provide care to more complex patients with less money, if this continues one presumes that local practices will financially fail while Dr Jefferies choses which colour Bentley to buy. In the longer term, the capacity issue is NOT resolved, in fact locally, due to financial pressure caused by GP@Hand local capacity will reduce – totally unsustainable. Dr J’s practice (via the babylon Hub?) will be using triage style GP approaches from NHS GP’s who, whilst manning phone lines, will be unavailable for face to face and thus the face to face capacity crisis sinks even deeper into the mire. Add to all of this … what capacity does Dr J’s practice have for these registrations and basic patient service? (please God tell me that they are not getting special GPFV funding to cover the admin to kill the rest of us off!?) and what impact is there on the previous patients of DR J’s who, prior to this experiment, were presumably enjoying a better service (‘tho’ NHS Choices suggests not). It is almost impossible to believe that somebody, somewhere in the NHS higher echelons thought that this was a model worthy of funding – God help us all!!
21 March 2018 @ 14:24
Its a bit like a referendum when we ask the country what road to take, and then realise lots more voted and we don’t like the outcome – the outcome wasn’t the problem… it was the lies that created the outcome that was. Unless of course Farage wants to pull £350m out of his behind?
21 March 2018 @ 14:56
the lie here is that this will “improve care”. It won’t, it will bring about the rapid collapse of the other local GP services who now have to provide REAL doctoring to complex patients having lost £2M in funds to these “cherry pickers” who are allowed to discriminate against patients on the basis of clinical need which is in complete breach of their GMS contract.
22 March 2018 @ 22:21
it is not gp @ hand which is flawed but the app roach that nhs leaders take to providing a service that is flawed, in my expetience young peoplec who do not have a lot of time think gp @ hand is a great idea, why are the older leaders so scared to be HoNeSt?
21 March 2018 @ 14:08
I don’t like the headline of this article, should it not focus on the benefits and value it adds.
Its a bit like a referendum when we ask the country what road to take, and then realise lots more voted and we don’t like the outcome.
Time for a different view on outcome based models i think, the populous has asked for a digital solution so will it help solve more issues or not?
Tim Carter – views are my own and not sponsored
21 March 2018 @ 14:51
Not on any level here is there any comparison with “the referendum”, get over it!