Although the General Practitioners’ Committee (GPC) has criticised the new voluntary contract for GPs, describing is as a “distraction’, local GP leaders have given plans to introduce a new contract for larger practices a tentative thumbs-up.

There are few details about the new contract, which was announced by Prime Minister David Cameron recently, but the nub is that practices signing up to it will no longer be subject to the “box ticking and form filling” that are a big part of the Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF).

The Department of Health (DH) has confirmed that under the deal payments will no longer be linked to QOF for practices, although it is likely that they will still need to record QOF indicators. In return, practices will be expected to grow through merging or federating to a list of at least 30,000 and provide weekend and evening routine access.

One has said that such a contract could be beneficial, as long as smaller practices are given time and support to federate. However, others have warned that it could put smaller practices further at risk, with one saying that a new voluntary contract with strings attached may be the equivalent of “changing one set of chains for another”.

In addition, the GPC has expressed anger at the lack of consultation before the contract was announced. A spokesman has said that the current offering ‘does nothing to address the root causes of the pressures on general practice’. He added that many GPs going through difficult reviews realise how vulnerable practices can be when subject to local funding pressures.