Background

The Commissioning and Investment plan for 2023/24 sets out a different approach to investing in General Practice. The aim is to support the sustainability and integration of primary care services within the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough system and provides an opportunity to shape investment more towards population health needs as part of the longer-term plan from 01 April 2024. NHS Cambridgeshire & Peterborough has committed £1m of ringfenced ICB funds to work with Integrated Neighbourhood Teams (INHs), practices and PCNs that are exploring different ways of achieving sustainability.

The plan is made up of the following main components:

  1. Core+ Service Delivery Plan
  2. Local Commissioning Service Investment
  3. Planning for investment in Population Health Needs
  4. Implementation of the Fuller Recommendations
  5. New GP Investment for Nursing Home beds

Local Commissioning Agreement (LCA) for 2023/24

A copy of the 2023/24 Agreement is attached along with the summary of the changes.

In addition to the above, the following schemes will continue into 2023/24, on the same terms and conditions as 2022/23 - please refer to the documents below.

Coding & Activity Reporting

Coding

Practices are required to record relevant activity using specified coding for the majority of the services.

The Primary Care IT Team have provided Ardens with the latest agreement, coding specification and reporting criteria (i.e. GMS, Temp, etc). The ICB would like practices use Ardens Templates & Reports for recording and reporting purposes. It is important for standardising across the ICB. If there are any queries regarding the templates or reports, please feed this back to the Primary Care IT Team via cpicb.primarycareit@nhs.net

Activity Reporting

Reporting requirements for both Core+ and Local Commissioning Service Investment will be light touch. Practices will be required to submit activity at the end of Q3 (or centrally extracted via our IT team). However, the ICB retains the ability to request information on activity throughout the year to assist with auditing and planning. Please refer to the individual appendices to understand the requirements for each service. For 2023/24, there will be no requirement for GP practices to submit activity for payment via CQRS Local for the services listed in the LCA.

However, as the Minor Surgery DES and Safeguarding Local Incentive Scheme (LIS) sit outside of the LCA, Practices will be required to submit monthly claims (by the 20th day of the following month) for these services via CQRS Local . For the Learning Disability DES, information recorded in patients’ records will be extracted automatically by the General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) and payments will be made monthly through CQRS national.  

If you have any queries regarding the above, please do not hesitate to contact us via cpicb.primarycare@nhs.net

For reference find the previous year's documents below.

Local Commissioning Agreements 2022-23

Background and context 

As a result of the BIG conversation that was held with General Practice back in early 2020, the NHS Cambridgeshire & Peterborough approved a 3-year commissioning agreement that provided a degree of financial security for practices and a commitment to no “in year” changes to enable practices to stabilise and manage the increasing demands on their workforce and services. 

For the past two years the NHS Cambridgeshire & Peterborough has also applied payment protection against the Local Commissioning Agreement until 31st March 2022 to support General Practices response to the COVID Pandemic. This payment protection arrangement ceased on the 31st March 2022. 

2022/23 is the final year of the NHS Cambridgeshire & Peterborough’s commitment to the 3-year Local Commissioning Agreement and therefore sees a continuation of existing services and expenditure as part of this commitment. 

The budget to support the 2022/23 plan of expenditure has been approved at just over £10.3 million and includes an inflationary uplift of 1.7% in line with the Acute Trusts.

Local Commissioning Agreement 2022/23 

A copy of the 2022/23 Agreement is attached as Appendix A or your perusal and consideration, with a summary of the changes and pricing for 2022/23 attached as Appendix B. 

Appendix A - CCG Local Commissioning Agreement 2020-23 (Amended May 2022v2).pdf[pdf] 780KB

Appendix B -Summary of the Local Commissioning Agreement & Pricing 22-23 V2.pdf[pdf] 233KB

Also attached are the NHSE/I Directed Enhanced Service specifications relating to the Minor Surgery DES and Learning Disability DES, which the NHS Cambridgeshire & Peterborough will be managing locally during 2022/23. 

Learning Disability Health Checks Service Level Agreements 22_23 C&P.pdf [pdf] 220KB

Minor Surgery Directed Enhanced Service (DES) 22-23 C&P.pdf[pdf] 156KB

Reporting and claiming in 2022/23 

In 2022/23, reporting and claiming under this agreement will be on a monthly basis by 20th day of each following month via CQRS Local, with the exception of all of the list based remunerated services: 

The Primary Care Team are currently in the process of preparing the CQRS Local Portal to “Go Live” and will advise practices when this has been completed. Practices will be required to submit all activity undertaken under this agreement between 1 - 30 April 2022. The deadline has been extended in light of the delay in sending out the agreement and offering the services on CQRS Local. 

The CCG primary Care IT Team will no longer be providing or maintaining data entry templates or clinical reports to support the Local Commissioning Level Agreements due to the move across to using Ardens. 

To ensure ongoing quality of care and accuracy of data, the NHS Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Primary Care IT Team have worked closely with Ardens who have confirmed all necessary coding is now available and clearly marked as required for reporting where possible. 

The Primary Care IT Team would therefore strongly recommend using the Ardens templates going forward to capture clinical and administrative information and their reports for submissions. The report can be found under the folder labelled Arden's Ltd > Contracts I 2022 23 

If there are any queries regarding the Ardens template or reports, please contact the Primary Care IT Team - CAPCCG.PrimaryCareIT@nhs.net.