New DES Directions and an amendment to the general medical services (GMS) Statement of Financial Entitlements (SFE)
July 2006
New Directed Enhanced Services (DES) Directions and an amendment to the general medical services (GMS) Statement of Financial Entitlements (SFE) have now been published. These incorporate the new Directed Enhanced Services which were agreed as part of the revisions to the GMS contract for 2006/07.
The new DES Directions can be downloaded from the Department of Health's website .
The new SFE sections (7A, 7B, 7C and 7D) detailing the four new payments can be downloaded from the Department of Health's website
As a result of the negotiations around this legislation, there has been further clarity around some aspects of the DESs. Practices and primary care trusts (PCTs) will wish to note the following.
Access DES
An updated table of threshold targets and associated rewards, which replaces that which was published as Appendix A of Annex 4 in Revisions to the GMS contract 2006/07, has now been agreed and is published in section 7B of the revised SFE. This table provides details of the financial rewards payable to practices for patient satisfaction levels between the minimum and maximum access thresholds, as measured by the results of the national patient survey.
Choice and Booking DES
There is no reference in the DES Directions or the SFE to the 25% aspiration target in June 2006 booking. Therefore, the only target the contractor has to meet to retain the aspiration payment is to reach the minimum year-end standard of at least 50% of its referrals (converted Unique Booking Reference Numbers) through Choose and Book in the period 1 September 2006 to 28 February 2007.
The June target was intended to ensure that practices started using Choose and Book early enough to be able to reach the minimum level in the measurement period of September to February. With the payment thresholds starting at 50% and the full value of the booking component only payable if a practice achieves 90% or more, any practice hoping to achieve the maximum payment needs to start using Choose and Book as soon as possible.
Information management and technology DES
Practices must indicate in writing to the PCT before 1 February 2007 that they wish to participate in this DES.
It is acknowledged that there will be variations in the timing of the roll-out of the information management and technology (IM&T) systems, and of the associated IM&T DES payments, across the country. PCTs will need to ensure that in planning their budgets they recognise that, where appropriate, some IM&T DES payments are likely to be made in 2007/08, with an absolute cut-off of March 31 2008.
Download the DES directions in PDF format (35K)
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