Family doctors offered £55 for a dementia diagnosis

Family doctors will be paid £55 for every dementia diagnosis they make under a new controversial scheme announced by NHS England.

Leading GPs have condemned the plan as an “ethical travesty” which amounts to a system of “cash for diagnoses”.

The payment has been launched as part of NHS England’s ‘Dementia Identification Scheme’, designed to help achieve the Government’s target of diagnosing two-thirds of people with dementia by 2015.

The new incentive has prompted anger among GPs who opposed raising diagnosis rates from the beginning.

Dr Iona Heath, former RCGP president and a GP in north London, told Pulse magazine: “I think the proposal is an intellectual and ethical travesty.”

Dr Martin Brunet, a GP in Godalming, Surrey, added: “It crosses a line that has not been crossed before – the direct payment on the basis of making a diagnosis, or 'cash for diagnoses'. We are used to being paid for items of service under QOF, but what is unique about the diagnosis is that patients have to trust us – they cannot opt out of it like they can with aspects of QOF.”

Under the new scheme, doctors would receive £55 for every extra patient given a diagnosis of dementia between September 2014 and March 2015.

Katherine Murphy, Chief Executive of the Patients Association, fears the move will reward poor GP practices that are currently failing to identify and diagnose people with dementia.

She told The Telegraph: “This is putting a bounty on the head of certain patients. Good GPs will be diagnosing their dementia patients already. This seems to be rewarding poor GPs. It is a distortion of good medical practice.”

In response to the backlash, a spokesperson for NHS England said: “We know that more needs to be done across the health service to ensure that people living with dementia are identified so that they can get the tailored care and support they need. This additional investment is part of a larger range of measures to support GPs in their work tackling dementia.”