Published 15 September 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3815
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3815

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GPs are to be paid £5.25 a shot for swine flu vaccination

¹ London

GPs in England are to be paid £5.25 (5.90; $8.70) for every dose of swine flu vaccine they administer, once it is licensed, under a deal agreed between the BMA and the Department of Health.

In total, GPs stand to earn an extra £47m between them, or about £1424 each, if they vaccinate all the nine million people in England identified as being at risk.

The health secretary, Andy Burnham, said, "This deal represents good value for money, as the vaccine programme will reduce the number of people who will need hospital treatment."

There is still no indication of when the vaccine will become available or whether the vaccination programme will later be extended to the rest of the population. That decision will depend on the how the pandemic develops, the government has said. If the disease remains mild, universal vaccination will not be introduced.

Laurence Buckman, chairman of the BMA’s General Practitioners Committee, said, "We are pleased we have reached a national agreement, as we believe this is the best way to deliver the vaccine to the at-risk population. This will be a lot of additional work for practices, but general practice is used to running large vaccination programmes."

In his letter to trusts and other NHS organisations in England, Ian Dalton, the national director of NHS flu resilience, said that three other elements had been negotiated as part of the deal, "in recognition of the additional workload that practices will undertake to deliver this vaccination programme and to incentivise practices to achieve the highest possible uptake of the vaccination for these most at-risk patients."

One element is that no changes will be made to the quality and outcomes framework (QOF) in 2010-11: the changes recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the incentive system for general practices will not be implemented until 2011-12. The department also agreed that those practices that achieve a high uptake of swine flu vaccination will have their thresholds for the QOF patient experience indicators for 2011-12 reduced. And practices are being given an extra six weeks to deliver the programme of vaccination of children against other types of flu in the third quarter of 2009-10, meaning that the vaccination period would end in mid-February rather than mid-December.

The risk groups indentified for swine flu vaccination, in order of priority, are people aged 6 months to 65 years who are eligible for seasonal flu vaccination, pregnant women, household contacts of immunocompromised individuals, and people over 65 who are eligible for the seasonal flu vaccine.

Frontline health and social care staff will also be offered the vaccine, at the same time as the first clinical risk group (BMJ 2009;339:b3363, 17 Aug, doi:10.1136/bmj.b3363).

Mr Dalton said, "All NHS boards have a responsibility to maximise staff participation in the vaccination programme. I expect every organisation to have a plan for ensuring that as many frontline staff as possible take up the offer of early vaccination. We all know that uptake of the seasonal flu vaccine among NHS staff is traditionally low. It is an NHS Board responsibility that we do not find ourselves in this position with the swine flu vaccine."

Cite this as: BMJ 2009;339:b3815

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