Many of you will have seen the recent claims from NHS England that ending half-day closures could save more than 280,000 GP appointments a year. The GPC responded promptly and publicly stating that as we know, GP practices are working hard to deliver the best possible services with the resources available as they strive to meet the growing needs of their patients. In many cases, GPs not only work long hours during the day but also deliver services out-of-hours and with many doctors also working evenings and weekends. GP practices want to deliver the best for their communities but with significant workforce shortages, and a failure of NHS England to invest in much needed premises and IT infrastructure, it's left GPs under greater pressure than ever before.

Following the contract agreement in England earlier this year, the GMS and PMS amendment regulations have been laid before Parliament and have now been published on the gov.uk website here:

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2019/1137/contents/made

These amendment regulations will come into force from 1st October 2019. As usual, this is an amendment and not a new consolidated version of the full regulations.

Responding to Public Health England's estimate that 1 in 7 5-year olds have yet to be fully immunised against MMR, the BMA Board of Science Chair, Prof Dame Parveen Kumar said: "GPs are very concerned that the number of young children who are up to date with vaccinations seems to be falling. Measles can be a very serious illness and whilst diptheria and whooping cough are thankfully relatively rare, they remain a risk to children who are not vaccinated."  Importantly, it is frontline staff - notably GPs and Practice Nurses - who must be given the resources the provide a successful and comprehensive vaccination programme, to protect children in all parts of the population.

NHS England and the GPC England have agreed on a non-mandatory, high level data sharing template for use by PCN's. To make things easier for practices, the BMA has also produced a version of the agreed template which expands on a number of areas with greater detail, along with guidance on the document.  This provides practices with a better idea of how they might like to populate the template agreement, including proposed best practice when sharing and transferring data between partners within the network.  Further information and a link to the BMA resources are available on the BMA website.