Currently, GPs are not allowed to sell OTC medicines to patients in order to ensure that decisions to recommend medicines are based solely on clinical factors.

But the newspaper says that it has seen a Whitehall document showing that ministers have backed the plans.

As part of a review of the rules on pharmacies and the NHS, the DoH carried out an impact assessment of a move to allow doctors to sell OTC medical products Read more »

The regulator says that Hertfordshire-based Aquote, whose policies are supposed to pay for locum cover in the event of sickness, is unauthorised and trading illegally.

‘We don’t have a figure (for how many practices are affected),’ said a spokesman. He added that ‘from an unauthorised company it will be difficult to get your money back.’

Dr Henry Murray, a GP at the Newburgh Surgery on Tayside, bought Read more »

The committee is hoping to change the core funding formula agreed last October where funding is distributed via a complex formula that cuts practices’ reliance on correction factors, due to be implemented in April. The earliest this could change is 2010/11.

GPC chairman Dr Laurence Buckman also warned that hundreds of practices could close if PCTs do not arrange support packages for practices due to lose out when the prevalence formula Read more »

Speaking in Parliament last week, she said: ‘The overall exception rate for England reduced from 5.83% in 2006/7 to 5.26% in 2007/8. Independent research shows that practices in deprived areas are slightly more likely to exception-report patients than practices in affluent areas – I believe that the difference is less than 1%.

‘The research concludes that GPs in deprived areas achieved high QOF scores without high rates Read more »

Practical education for contraception services is underfunded and training sessions can be seen as a hindrance to meeting service targets, Cornwall GP Dr Sarah Gray says in the February issue of MIMS Women’s Health.

Dr Gray, who is involved with training GPs and practice nurses in their own practices to provide sexual health services, told Healthcare Republic: ‘It can be done without practices having to invest huge sums Read more »

The campaign, launched by the fpa (formerly the Family Planning Association), is entitled Finding the Perfect Partner and will run from the 9-15 February.

Each campaign pack will contain leaflets and posters for waiting room displays, as well as a briefing for health professionals.

Julie Bentley, chief executive of the fpa, said: ‘We are delighted that for the first time we are able to provide GPs with our popular Read more »

More than 1,000 practices use the pricy 0845 numbers, which provide extra functions such as queuing for unanswered calls.

Practices have been under growing pressure to drop the lines, which cost patients up to 5.8p a minute to phone.

The decision to scrap the charges will mean that, from Friday 16 January, patients will be able to phone around 300 practices that use 0845 numbers for free.

The larger number of Read more »

The Guardian reports a story broken by GP in April 2007 that patients are to be allowed to comment on and rate their practices on the website now run by the Capita Group.

Health minister Ben Bradshaw tells The Guardian that appropriate software will be ready next year but that content will be moderated so no individual GP or staff member is named and shamed.

He says: ‘I would never think of going on holiday without Read more »

The pledge was made by health minister for GPs Ben Bradshaw in a recent letter to shadow Conservative health secretary Andrew Lansley.

Labour ministers today wrote to their Conservative counterparts asking whether they would support David Cameron’s cuts to key investment projects that Labour has brought forward to help the UK through the current economic downturn.

The Tories voted against the government’s pre-budget Read more »

DoH figures for November show 65% of England’s 8,263 practices are now open at evenings and weekends, compared with 59% in October.

Western Cheshire PCT is the only PCT with no practices offering the service, but that is because its local arrangement with
GPs is not recognised by the DoH.

Over 85% of PCTs have now met the DoH’s target of having half of its practices offering extended hours.

Read more »