NHS England has agreed to review the Quality and Outcomes Framework and this work will begin shortly.

The Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention programme ended in 2013 when wider changes to the health and care system came into being. A summary of each of the work streams, and key achievements was published at:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/qipp-national-workstreams-updated

Following the Budget announcements, local authorities in England will receive an additional £2 billion for social care over the next three years.

This funding will allow councils to support more people and sustain a diverse care market. It will also help to ease pressures on the National Health Service, by supporting more people to be discharged from hospital and into care as soon as they are ready.

In addition, to help manage pressure on accident and emergency (A&E) services this winter, the Government is providing £100 million new capital investment in A&E departments. This will help to ensure patients access the most appropriate care as quickly as possible by improving the space for assessing patients and providing on-site general practitioner facilities.

The Government has no current plans to require clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to include a representative of local pharmacists on their governing boards.

However, the Health and Social Care Act 2012 allows CCGs to appoint pharmacists to governing boards as lay members, in accordance with their constitutions.

The information for this assessment is not held centrally. It is for local clinicians to decide what treatment is most appropriate for their patients.

With regard to utilising the important role that community pharmacists fulfil, measures announced on 20 October 2016 mean that from 1 December 2016, we have helped to relieve pressure on other parts of the National Health Service, by embedding pharmacy into the urgent care pathway, including for those who need urgent repeat prescriptions and treatment for urgent minor ailments and common conditions. Patients who need urgent repeat prescription medicines will be referred from NHS 111 directly to community pharmacies, rather than via a general practitioner out-of-hours service, and NHS England will encourage clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to commit to national coverage of minor ailments services delivered through pharmacies commissioned locally by April 2018. This will build on the some half of CCGs which already commission this service from community pharmacies.

The new Pharmacy Integration Fund has been established to support additional programmes to better embed pharmacists’ clinical skills within NHS services, including more effective integration with general practice.

We are committed to employing up to 2,000 pharmacists in general practices across the country. To date, the pilot programme has successfully integrated 491 clinical pharmacists into 658 general practices across England and funding is now available for the deployment of the further 1,500 clinical pharmacists in general practices by 2020.

In the Spring Budget, the Chancellor announced £5 million of new funding to support women to return to work following taking time out to have children. In order to identify how best to increase the number of returnships with this funding, the Government will be working with both business groups and public sector organisations.

In addition, NHS England has completed a review of the GP Induction and Refresher Scheme, and is part way through implementing a range of improvements to it to make it easier and quicker for doctors to return to practice, while maintaining necessary safeguards of quality and safety. There are currently over 200 doctors on the scheme; this compares to only 20 doctors completing the scheme in the first year following its launch in 2015.

During March 2017, NHS England will also be launching a “Return to General Practice” marketing campaign, including print and social media adverts aiming to promote the package of financial and practical support now available to returning GPs.

The Government has committed to an extra 5,000 doctors in general practice by 2020, as part of a wider increase to the total workforce in general practice of 10,000.

NHS England and Health Education England are working together with the profession to increase the general practitioner (GP) workforce. This includes measures to boost recruitment into general practice, encourage GPs to return to practice, and address the reasons why experienced GPs are considering leaving the profession.

Health Education England has implemented a range of improvements to increase the flexibility of the GP recruitment processes and enable maximum recruitment into GP speciality training. Health Education England reports that 3,019 new starters were recruited to GP training posts in 2016. This represents the highest number of GP trainees the National Health Service has ever recruited in to specialty training in general practice.

In October 2016, NHS England announced a package of improvements to the GP Induction and Refresher Scheme to make it easier and quicker for qualified doctors to return to general practice, this is supplemented by a campaign to encourage doctors to return. Over 200 are currently registered on the induction and refresher scheme. NHS England is also starting to approve local schemes to bring in suitably qualified and experienced doctors from overseas.

To support the retention of doctors NHS England has announced the launch of the GP Career Plus Scheme in 2017 to test a range of ways to offer flexibility and support for experienced GPs at risk of leaving general practice, this is in addition to the retained doctors scheme which offers funding to support doctors who can only work a limited number of sessions in general practice.

No central estimate has been made of the number of GPs that will offer services in the Chipping Barnet constituency. This is for the NHS to determine locally.