Consortia/Federations - are you being legally advised?

The GP horizon features a requirement for GP practices to form in to consortia with other practices for the purposes of commissioning health and care services. While separately the RCGP advocates the need for GPs to form Federations, in order to act as providers of health services.

However the horizon pans out, GPs will be forced to consider legal issues surrounding the set up and operation of such vehicles. Current thinking is that the consortia are likely to be statutory public bodies; this means they will be subject to regulations governing such bodies including, for example, Freedom of Information and public procurement.

The good news is that there should be some general legal guidance produced, but what happens when you get to the point of actually being presented with legal agreements to sign or issues on FOI or public procurement arise?

It is also mooted that leading private companies are planning a major joint initiative to persuade GP consortia to partner up with them. If that should be attractive to local consortia then it will result in negotiation of detailed contracts. Will general legal guidance cover this?

Birkett Long has experts able to advise on all issues connected with the set up and ongoing operation of consortia and federations. We are also happy to work with any number of practices requiring the same advice – enabling the legal costs to be shared.