GP practices told they owe thousands of pounds due to payment system error
16 NOTTS SURGERIES HAVE TO PAY BACK MONEY BEING SPENT ON SERVICES
PARTNERS at a Nottingham GP practice say they have been left “distressed” by an admin error which is forcing them to pay more than £100,000.
Sixteen practices across Nottinghamshire are being ordered to pay back thousands after they were wrongly paid for providing out-ofhours services.
Partners at Tudor House Medical Practice, in Sherwood, were told in October that they would need to pay back £108,000. “It’s a real blow because we work towards a budget,” said Dr Jonathan Lloyd.
“To be told we have to find the money and reduce expenditure on patient care for the foreseeable future is terrible news. It’s still causing weekly stress, we’ve had to have numerous meetings about who we can employ in the long term future.”
Dr Lloyd, 56, who has been a partner at the practice for 12 years, said he was being forced to “crunch the numbers significantly”. He said his 7,000 patients may have slightly longer waits but should expect the “general standards to remain pretty much unchanged”.
“We’re certainly not going to close because of it,” he said. The national payments system failed to deduct money, which ranges from £20,000 to £300,000, from the 16 practices’ budgets after a change to their contracts.
The Nottinghamshire Integrated Care Board (ICB), which is responsible for health provision, said it was speaking to practices on a one-toone basis to “agree the best way for them to repay over an agreed period”.
Michael Wright, chief executive of Nottinghamshire LMC, said other practices are “feeling angry and really feeling hard done to”.
“There’s none that said this will tip them over but some are worried that it could contribute,” he said. “There’s a lot that will take this and get on with it but for a few it will destabilise them.”
Mr Wright called for the ICB to either reconsider the amount owed by GP practices or write it off altogether. “The money was still being spent on public services, taking the money back is going to leave them potentially in trouble,” he said.
Another practice affected by the error is the Windmill Practice in Sneinton, which owes £174,000. Its partners recently decided to hand back their contract, but Mr Wright said this was not because of the money it owes.
“They had been looking to close for a while,” he said. “This didn’t help but it was not the main problem. I don’t think [patients overall] should be worried, but they should be worried about the ongoing viability of GP practices.”
A spokesperson for Nottinghamshire ICB said: “We are in discussions with specific individual GP practices in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire relating to the repayment of monies back to the ICB that were paid to them in error, for services which they did not provide.
“In all cases the situation arose following changes made in contractual status and the contract payment mechanism not being adjusted to reflect the change.
“We very much regret the impact that this may have had on practices operating as independent businesses. However, this is the public’s money, and we have a duty to ensure it is allocated correctly. To minimise the impact on those affected practices, we are speaking with them on a one-to-one basis to agree the best way for them to repay over an agreed period.”