Careful what you sign, warns GPC

GPs are being advised to do more to look after their constitution. Their CCG one.

According to the GPC, some doctors’ practices have been put under pressure to sign up to documents that would impose certain duties upon them with proper involvement from LMCs.

Chairman Dr Laurence Buckman warned: ‘We are concerned that practices are being pushed into signing up to inter-practice agreements’.

Now GP leaders have produced a seven-point ‘voluntary, fair commissioning charter’ and are urging all CCGs to adopt it:

It asks CCGs to:

1 Work to improve the quality of and access to local services and to cut health inequalities
2 Develop a culture of genuinely clinician-led commissioning
3 Engage with patients and the public
4 Operate transparently and openly and not engage in any contracts/negotiations that impose conditions of commercial confidentiality
5 Resist any qualified provider being imposed from external sources
6 Consider relationships between individual GPs and patients
7 Establish and strengthen working relationships with LMCs.

27 APRIL 2012