Healthcare team blazes a trail for GP Pathfinders

Release date: 10/12/2010

Harvey Ingram healthcare specialists are set to advise pioneering GPs keen to press ahead with commissioning care for patients.

The new initiative to empower clusters of practices and enable them to make and oversee regional healthcare commissioning was announced by the government earlier this year.

The first wave of new style practices are now set to join the so-called Pathfinder Programme, which will identify and support groups of GPs anxious to press ahead and make faster progress in taking on the new roles set out in the government's NHS White Paper.

Specialist healthcare lawyer and Harvey Ingram partner Roy Botterilll says: "The Pathfinder Programme will enable GPs to test different styles of commissioning consortia, identify key issues, share knowledge and learning early on.

"Their experience will be invaluable helping shape the way GP consortia will work and pave the way for a host of critical business models for others to follow. Progress will also help give the wider commissioning community confidence to support other Pathfinder consortia in developing and taking on the new roles in commissioning local services."

To help kick-start the programme the Department of Health has made £1 million available from a central funding pot to support regional learning programmes across England. If all goes to plan, the first group of Pathfinder consortia is named this month. From then other emerging consortia will then be able to join the programme on a rolling basis."

But Botterill warns that there are a host of key issues practices need to consider well before the formal creation of commissioning consortia.

He adds: "The new found freedom, access and control offers huge opportunities, but GPs also face the spectre of navigating their way through a complex and murky regulatory landscape.

"From the outset GPs look set to be responsible, tightly regulated and publicly accountable for everything from organisational reforms, commissioning, contracting, procurement, clinical, corporate and information governance, HR matters, property and a host of miscellaneous environmental issues. The full extent to which GP consortia will be bound by regulatory duties is still unclear but getting a team of advisors on hand is clearly vital."

Not all of these duties will automatically apply to every GP consortia, which will depend on the ultimate structure of GP cluster. But the government is very likely to opt to impose many duties via legislation or policy, which will need to be carefully navigated.