Contents
Overview
Know your UDA position and prioritise urgent appointments
Offer affordable private options
Plan how to avoid this happening next year
Overview
The GDS contract encourages activity to be spread throughout the year with surgeries remaining open to see and treat NHS patients. To achieve this, it is important that practices balance their activity in these last few months to ensure they have enough UDAs remaining to continue to see NHS patients. Here are our recommendations to avoid exhausting NHS activity before the end of the year.
Know your UDA position and prioritise urgent appointments
It is important to know your UDA target and how many UDAs you have left to achieve. Calculate how best to spread these over the remaining weeks to year end. You cannot be required to work for free, but you do have to comply with the contract.
You should continue seeing NHS patients throughout the year therefore, and consider prioritising only the urgent patients. Reschedule existing and new non-urgent appointments to the following year. Explain to patients that you will have the ability to see them from April when you have renewed funding. Communicate this clearly and effectively to your patients and be prepared for some to be upset. Empathy will go a long way to help manage your patient base.