Another statement has just been released regarding the PCSE incident whereby thousands of patient medical records were incorrectly archived instead of being sent to the subsequent GP practices. These records have now been sent back to practices, and NHS England is expecting those practices to undertake an assessment of harm for each patient affected. Practices affected will, by now, have received a list of NHS numbers of the patients whose records were delayed.

NHS Digital have just published their annual report on NHS Payments to General Practice in England for 2018/19. This provides information on NHS payments to individual providers of general practice services in England. Figures are given for the main payment categories - which include Global Sum, PMS expenditure, QOF and Local Incentive Schemes. It constitutes the majority of actual monies paid to practices for all activities and costs during the 2018/19 financial year. For further details, please click onto the link on the next page:

The GPC has just concluded a review of the management and use of patient data by the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD). The GPC are now content that practices can safely and lawfully share data with the CPRD.

The GPC carried out tests on a number of theoretical risks and considered them to be below any threshold of concern. There is a significant amount of key data process to protect patient identity and data security during the process used by the CPRD. No free text, documents or associated files are extracted from records.

Last week saw the first GPC UK meeting of the session. The committee focussed on a wide range of area, including updates on contractual negotiaitons, the work of the policy groups and reports from the sessional GP committee and GP trainees committee. There was much discussion on the actions taken in recent months to improve sessional representation and the important work in this field continues. There was also an update on the work of the Cameron Fund which is the only medical benevolent fund which solely supports GPs and their dependents.