GPs May Soon Stop Monitoring Vulnerable Patients In Favour of Focusing on the Booster Jab Roll-out

Sajid Javid, accompanied by NHS bosses, are in discussion with the British Medical Association (BMA) about potentially scrapping the Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF) – a move which the BMA fully supports. The QOF means that doctors have a financial incentive to assess the health of vulnerable patients, but the Government wishes to scrap this policy in favour of GPs spending more of their time assisting the booster jab roll-out – an operation which the Health Secretary has described as being the Government’s top priority. The Guardian has more.

Ministers may allow GPs in England to halt regular monitoring of millions of patients with underlying health problems as part of the urgent new blitz on delivering Covid booster jabs.

Sajid Javid and NHS bosses are locked in talks with GP representatives at the BMA about relaxing rules which mean family doctors undertake checks on people with diabetes, high blood pressure and other conditions that mean they are at higher risk of having a heart attack or stroke.

On Wednesday the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) identified 10 further cases of the Omicron variant, bringing the total detected in the U.K. to 32.

The BMA, the doctors’ union, has been lobbying Javid for months to suspend or scrap the Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF), which it says is “bureaucratic” and interferes with GPs’ right to judge how they care for patients.

Ministers and NHS England want to free up more GP time to help increase the delivery of boosters from 350,000 to 500,000 a day to counter the threat posed by Omicron, which is feared to be more transmissible with the potential to evade vaccines. Vaccine firms are trying to establish whether Omicron has the power to reduce the efficacy of jabs, and whether the jabs can be tweaked in response.

Boris Johnson has pledged that every adult in England will be offered a top-up shot by the end of January, piling pressure on NHS leaders to come up with a plan to ensure that happens.

Officials with knowledge of the talks told the Guardian that those involved spent much of Tuesday discussing the suspension of part or all of the requirements under QOF. “They’re talking about a partial suspension of QOF. But they may well just bin it,” one said.

However, sources stressed that ministers are nervous about approving a move that could lead to claims that vulnerable patients could see any deterioration in their condition go undetected by GPs.

Javid told the BBC on Wednesday that dramatically increasing the number of booster jabs in England was “our new national mission – in terms of the public health of this country, there is nothing more important than this booster programme”.

He disclosed that he was in talks with GP leaders about unspecified plans to reduce their workloads, including his edict that they must see any patient face-to-face on request.

Under QOF, family doctors get payments in return for undertaking checks, often every six months or every year, of the blood pressure or cholesterol levels in patients already identified as at increased risk of a heart attack or stroke. The checks also include assessments of diabetics and drug reviews for those who are on long-term medication to reduce their risk of dying.

“The targets for monitoring blood pressure and diabetes are important for health. But if they remove them, then certain newspapers will claim that they are neglecting patient care,” said one official of the dilemma facing Javid. GPs across Britain have delivered the vast bulk of the 116 million Covid vaccine doses which patients across the U.K. have received since December 8th last year.

Worth reading in full.