Alternative providers of GP services perform worse than traditional practices

Researchers have warned that the quality of care in the NHS in England may suffer from the influx of private and voluntary sector providers, after finding that the performance of alternative providers of GP services was worse than that of traditional practices on a range of indicators.

The researchers, from Imperial College London, compared the quality of primary care services provided under new alternative provider contracts with that in traditional models of general practice. In the open cohort study they examined data on how all general practices in England operating between 2008-09 and 2012-13 performed on 17 established quality indicators covering clinical effectiveness, safety, patients’ experience, timeliness …