FrontPoint Systems Ltd

The DoH has announced the next lot of new GP practices to be set up in “under-doctored areas”.

The first practices are expected to open to patients in a year’s time and will be funded from the £250 million access fund announced last month. The access fund will also provide at least 150 GP-led health centres across the country.

So another central procurement, just around the time that the Commercial Directorate is to be allegedly downsized!

And if the procurement is to be run by the Commercial Directorate, will they take into account the dossier that the GPC has been collecting as well as the complaints from Third Sector organisations about the way they are being indirectly excluded from the contracts?

The full list of PCTs are: Manchester, Barking and Dagenham, Knowsley, Sandwell,Wolverhampton City, Heywood, Middleton and Rochdale, Liverpool, Sunderland Teaching, Birmingham East and North, Halton and St Helens, Heart of Birmingham Teaching, Barnsley, Leicester City, Oldham, Blackburn with Darwen, Stoke on Trent, Hounslow, Hull, Nottingham City, Blackpool, Ashton, Leigh and Wigan, Dudley, Bolton, Greenwich Teaching, Sefton, Medway Teaching, Salford, Hartlepool, Tameside and Glossop, Walsall Teaching, Newcastle, Redcar and Cleveland, South Tyneside, Calderdale, North Lancashire, Luton Teaching, Havering and Hammersmith and Fulham.

I guess that there will be more batches to follow. Though there has been no definition of an under-doctored area & the criteria by which these practices were selected, in addition to which there has been no explanation of whether these contracts will be available via APMS only or open to PMS & GMS providers as well.

The Department of Health will hold a national conference on Thursday 13 Dec in London for commissioners and providers to discuss advancing plans for increased numbers of GP surgeries and GP led health centres.

Sounds interesting enough to turn up to.

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