NHS England has committed to having an OPEL system for general practice, meaning practices will have to send regular data to the NHS/ICB relating to how you are coping with system pressures. There are no guarantees this data will be fully anonymised and as such, Londonwide LMCs has grave concerns that this data will be used to make judgements about practices rather than to consider system failings.
For some time, we have been promoting the use of the General Practice Alert State (GPAS) system. A major advantage of this system is that it is totally anonymous, so allows you to honestly report the pressure you are under in the knowledge that this will only be reported to the NHS/ICB as a borough level summary. This reflects that the pressures practices are all under are normally due to system failings and not individual practice failings.
There is a narrowing window of opportunity to make the case for a GP-led approach, with you, other local practices and your area LMC collaborating to support the GPAS system. This would protect you from the risk of yet more identifiable data being gathered that could be used to performance manage you or lay systemic failings at the door of your practice.
The GPAS form is simple, it takes less than three minutes a week to complete. All Londonwide LMCs needs is a named person and a deputy to send the weekly email with the form link to. If you have not already done so please register using our short form and help the LMC to help you.