UK Health Secretary on GP Fundholding

The National Health Service budget allocation for the pharmaceutical element of general practitioner fundholding in England has increased from L162.4 million in 1991-92, when the fundholding scheme was first introduced, to L328.3 million in 1992-93 and L689.9 million in 1993-94, reaching an estimated L1.08 billion ($1.77 billion) in 1994-95, the UK House of Commons All-Party Health Select Committee has heard.

Asked at a Committee evidence session last week if she envisaged GPs being given full responsibility for all purchasing decisions within the foreseeable future, Secretary of State for Health Virginia Bottomley replied that such a move would be a long way off, but added that she remains committed to GPs becoming ever more closely involved with purchasing decisions. She anticipated that, as far as she could see, GP purchasing would remain a partnership arrangement with the Regional Health Authorities, and she stressed that fundholding was a voluntary arrangement, and would remain so.

7% of the population of England was covered by the fundholding scheme in 1991-92, its first year of operation, with 1,715 GPs becoming fundholders in the first wave of the scheme, the Committee was told. By 1993-94 this had risen to 6,103 GPs covering 25% of the English population, and provisional estimates for 1994-95 put the total at 8,760, or one-third of all GPs, covering 35% of the population.