At an All-Party Parliamentary Group meeting in London last week, health minister Lord Howe said many PCT duties would go to local authorities or the NHS Commissioning Board, so consortia can focus on commissioning.
Last month, GP reported DoH plans to limit consortia's duties by scrapping PCT functions (12 November). Lord Howe said the DoH wanted to avoid micromanaging GPs.
'That does not mean consortia can abandon good management,' he said. 'The key will be ...
to shed some of the interference the medical profession has to endure.'
Lord Howe said metrics to performance manage GPs would become 'more meaningful and powerful'. 'If we get the information systems right it should take a lot of drudgery out of the current administrative burden.'
