It’s been a funny old week writing about general practice. On Thursday Healthcare Republic reported that the White Paper meant a proportion of GP practice income would be linked to the outcomes that commissioning consortia achieve.

On Friday senior GP reaction to 41-page White Paper document Liberating the NHS: commissioning for patients was split. Would the ‘quality premium’ come from historic funding (what practices were already getting = bad news) or funds freed up by the abolition of PCTs (new money = good news)?

By Monday it wasn’t just the GPC which wanted more detail because even the DoH didn’t appear to know the answer to the question above, although the word from Team Lansley was that the news was likely to be bad.

On Wednesday Healthcare Republic reports that even GPs are not convinced that plans to hand the profession control of commissioning most NHS services will generate savings.

Their concerned voices join that of blogger Professor Paul Corrigan, a former adviser to Tony Blair no less, who fears that health secretary Andrew Lansley’s GP commissioning revolution might just be snuffed out by those pesky NHS managers.

I blogged last week about how the health White Paper should mean more pay for GPs. And I still can’t believe there will be no carrot only stick on the negotiating table when the GPC sits down with the new coalition government to work out how the new GP contracts (for medical services and commissioning) should change.

Surely the whole point of negotiation is that the government is prepared to give some ground to get the outcomes it wants? Playing hardball at this stage by imposing commissioning responsibilities without incentives shrieks to me of an opening negotiation position that could be altered.

But it is slightly disheartening that a fortnight after the White Paper publication the GPC is still asking for more detail about what it will all mean for GPs.

So, it’s all eyes on the contract negotiations ahead of the 11 October White Paper consultation date closure. Don’t forget to keep a close watch on Healthcare Republic for all the GP news that matters in the interim. And do tell us what you think in our new survey.