The Government has backed out of selling the NHS's internal staff agency - NHS Professionals after much opposition and demands for an enquiry. NHS Professionals is the NHS's internal staff agency. As the NHS is currently in the middle of waging a campaign against the use of external agency staff (needed because we have neither trained enough staff nor kept up pay sufficiently to retain them) NHS Professionals has suddenly become much more active and much more important to the NHS. It is used for staff to earn more in extra hours or to work on supply.

The new 111 NHS telephone service, starting on 5th September 2017 in Berkshire West and other parts of the Thames Valley has is designed as an Integrated Urgent Care service. It is more closely integrated with the out-of-hours GP service. It is anticipated that about 30% of calls will be handled by a clinician.

For 2016-17 NHS spending was 145 billion which is 6.5% of GDP of about 2.2 trillion. Private health spending is thought to be a little above 1% of GDP or about 26 billion, giving total health expenditure of 7.5 - 8% of GDP, but adding in social care for international comparison, total health expenditure by international definition is about 9.9% of GDP. For comparison Germany, France, Sweden and Japan spend about 11% of (a larger per capita) GDP.

Pulse Today magazine has reported that NHS England is planning that ALL GP referrals should be prospectively peer reviewed and is arranging a system of funding to incentivise this. Experience shows that this can reduce the overall rate of referrals. A concern is that reviewers may be making decisions with insufficient information. It is very much to be hoped that our Council of Practices will take direct responsibility and accountabiilty for this rather than farming it out to an external entity.

The Primary Care Commissioning Committee for Berkshire West meets in public at 1pm on Wednesday, 13th September at Shaw House, Church Road, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 2DR. If attending please register online. For details on asking questions at the meeting please see here.