Incentive payments are a normal part of the GP contract and in the past have been paid for a variety of other things to improve everything from dementia care to boosting vaccination rates and to prescribe statins to lower the risk of heart disease.<\/p>\n
This will be the first time weight loss drugs have been made part of the contract with the \u00a33,000 available for prescribing the maximum number of eligible patients Mounjaro.<\/p>\n
The drug only started being prescribed by GPs during this financial year \u2013 and access has been restricted to those severely obese with both a BMI of over 40 and certain health conditions.<\/p>\n
Next year that will be widened to those with a BMI of over 35 with the expectation that by 2028, 220,000 patients will be on Mounjaro provided by the NHS. The eligibility thresholds are lower for certain ethnic groups.<\/p>\n
However, rollout so far has been reported to be patchy with not all GPs currently prescribing them as much as expected.<\/p>\n
Katharine Jenner, director of Obesity Health Alliance, said the incentives were a welcome step.<\/p>\n
But she added: “This doesn’t mean weight loss drugs will suddenly be available to everyone who wants them.<\/p>\n
“NHS access will remain very limited and focused on those with the greatest clinical need, and these treatments are most effective when combined with sustained support.”<\/p>\n
And she added: “If we’re serious about moving from sickness to prevention, expanded treatment must go alongside stronger action to improve the food environment and prevent obesity in the first place.”<\/p>\n
Dr Katie Bramall, of the British Medical Association, said: “While the headlines promise much, in reality there will be no change to NHS England’s eligibility criteria for patients to access injectable weight\u2011loss medication on the NHS. <\/p>\n
“These proposals will do nothing over the next year to address the divide between those able to pay and those left waiting unable to afford private self-funded treatments”<\/p>\n
And Prof Victoria Tzortziou Brown, of the Royal College of GPs, added: “GPs do not withhold treatment or prescribe based on financial incentives. Decisions are guided by clinical judgement and what is safest and most appropriate for individual patients.<\/p>\n
“Widening the roll-out of these medications in general practice could end up increasing workload in a way that may not be sustainable and risk raising unrealistic expectations among patients who may not be eligible or for whom these medicines are not suitable.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Incentive payments are a normal part of the GP contract and in the past have been paid for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[18,135,19,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-352990","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116123102306845314","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}