Website of the Department of Health

Progress towards universal coverage, and practice take up

Latest data: 31 March 2007

• All PCTs had achieved universal coverage by December 2006
• Practice uptake is at 96%, up marginally from 96% in February

This data shows progress towards implementing practice based commissioning.

The first figure indicates PCT progress towards the target to achieve universal coverage. This is PCTs putting in place the arrangements to support practice based commissioning. These are providing practices with the budgets, information, incentives and accountability and governance arrangements to take on practice based commissioning.

The second figure indicates the number of practices that are starting to engage in practice based commissioning. This data shows the number of practices taking up an incentive payment - the nationally negotiated DES or a local alternative. This data is helpful in indicating PCT and practice engagement in practice based commissioning, which provides a basis on which to engage clinicians in commissioning decisions, redesign services to better meet patient needs, and make better use of health resources.

• Download March 2007 figures in Portable Document Format (PDF, 19K)
• Download March 2007 figures as Excel spreadsheet (XLS, 95K)
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Any queries should be addressed to:

• mailto:pbc@dh.gsi.gov.uk