With most of the deductions being reinvested in core funding, it looks much more positive than I first feared. In fact, it seems most practices should not lose out.
I say ‘seems’ because we are yet to be told how the core funding and global sum will be reallocated to practices. This is an extension of the same issue dealing with the reallocation of resources following the withdrawal of the MPIG. We need to know urgently.
There are some peculiar potential outcomes: although the monies released back into core funding will not suffer the out-of-hours deduction, they will presumably be affected by the list weighting.
A low performing QOF practice will not suffer too much from losing the 341 QOF points but might do well with these sums allocated back into the global sum, especially if the practice list has high weighting. Potentially worst affected will be a high performing QOF practice with low weighting.
But, as I said, it looks better that I thought, though we really do need the allocation formula for the full picture.
- Laurence Slavin is a partner with Ramsay Brown and Partners Chartered Accountants who specialise in the finances of GPs.
