NHS England has revealed more details about the ‘red tape challenge’ launched by the Government to ‘cut down’ on bureaucracy, in a bid to free up GPs’ time, including that it will have two phases.
Last month, health secretary Wes Streeting announced the challenge in which NHSE will ask GPs, hospitals and ICBs ‘what works well and what needs to change’ before the feedback is considered by a group made up of doctors in primary and secondary care.
Now NHS England has revealed that the challenge will run in two phases: one involving ‘listening’ to feedback (until December); and one ‘testing emerging recommendations’ in December and January.
NHS England is currently collating ‘examples of best practices’ in general practice, as the objective of this review is to ‘reduce bureaucracy through a rapid review of the issues’.
The bureaucracy review will focus around five groups, which will cover:
- Medicines and prescribing
- Data, digital and technology
- Workforce, training and education
- Contractual and financial flows
- Metrics
NHSE deputy medical director for primary care Dr Kiren Collison said that the review wants to find ‘short-term’ and ‘tangible’ solutions to interface issues.
During a webinar for GPs last week, she said: ‘It does cover primary and secondary care, and community and mental health, and it’s really aimed at engaging with a lot of people over the whole of the country to work out what people will find important, particularly short-term changes – real, tangible things that we can do in our systems that will make a real difference.
‘There are obviously going to be longer strategic approaches as well, and that can be built into the 10 year plan.
‘But the red tape challenge is trying to focus on those shorter term tangible things that we can achieve relatively quickly.
‘It’s certainly not replacing what everyone is already working hard on, but it’s ramping it up because we really want to drive the interface issues and the resolution of these issues much faster than perhaps we have done in the past.’
As part of the challenge every ICB and trust will be held to account on progress made in four key areas: onward referrals; complete care; call and recall; and clear points of contact.
The review will be led by NHS England’s director of primary care Professor Claire Fuller and Stella Vig, medical director for secondary care, who will report back to the health secretary and NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard in the New Year.
Labour had already pledged to cut GP bureaucracy as part of its manifesto promises.
A version of this story was first published by our sister title Pulse.
