GP surgeries told to hire more doctors as Government cuts funding red tape

Ministers are planning to slash red tape to enable GP surgeries in England to hire more doctors.

Leading medics have campaigned for GP surgeries to be given the freedom to use a staff funding pot to employ more GPs and additional practice nurses.

The Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme is a £1.4 billion fund designed to boost GP practice staff including physician associates and pharmacists, but not GPs or practice nurses.

Now the Government has announced that practices will be allowed to use the funding pot to recruit newly qualified GPs during 2024/25.

Officials said that the move is an “emergency measure” while the Government “works with the profession to identify longer-term solutions to GP unemployment and general practice sustainability”.

It is hoped that the changes will enable the hiring of more than 1,000 newly qualified doctors at GP practices around the country this year, the Department of Health and Social Care estimated.

However, it is unclear whether or not the measure will be enough to stop potential industrial action by GPs in England.

Family doctors have been balloted over whether or not they are willing to stage collective action amid a row over the new contract for GP services in England.

This collective action could potentially mean GPs limit the number of patients they will see each day to 25, they may choose to stop performing work they are not formally contracted to do, and they could potentially ignore “rationing” restrictions by “prescribing whatever is in the patient’s best interest”.

The results of the ballot are expected imminently.

We have got to think at the patient of the heart of this and I think it's an experiment that that has failed

In a recent interview with the PA news agency, Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer, chairwoman of the BMA’s England General Practitioners Committee, said that the scheme is an “experiment that has failed”.

But she did say that GPs had asked the Government to give practices more freedom to spend the funding pot as required as one of a number of “cost-neutral solutions and suggestions that can make a big difference” to the working lives of GPs around England.

Speaking about the scheme, Dr Bramall-Stainer told PA: “Some of these professionals and roles are really helpful, they’ve been really valuable, some less so.

“It’s an experiment. It was put in place by NHS England in 2019 for a five-year cycle – they want to extend it.

“But actually we’re losing patient satisfaction – the dissatisfaction has doubled in the past five years – and that is directly related to less access to a GP.

“GPs are having to spend more and more of their time supervising these team members.

“NHS England continue to say ‘Oh, you don’t always need to see a GP,’ and that might be true, but what we’re increasingly noticing is it might make most sense to see a GP rather than a patient having to go and see perhaps: a clinical pharmacist for their medication reviews; a first contact physiotherapist for a muscular skeletal condition; they might see a paramedic for something that presents quite acutely, but actually they could have just seen a GP once and got everything done in a one-stop shop.

“And we know that GPs were trained over 10 years to be expert generalists. We cannot expect other members of the team to be at the same level that we are, we don’t expect them to be.

“We have got to think at the patient of the heart of this and I think it’s an experiment that that has failed.

“I think it has got some aspects to it that are that are helpful, but the critical underlying point that the GP can supervise this broad primary multidisciplinary team is not going to work in an NHS that’s free at the point of service, where you have to rely on that gatekeeper to stop demand an activity spiralling out of control.”

Commenting on the new emergency measure, Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting said: “It is absurd that patients can’t book appointments while GPs can’t find work.

“This government is taking immediate action to put GPs to work, so patients can get the care they need.

“This is a first step, as we begin the long-term work of shifting the focus of healthcare out of hospitals and into the community, to fix the front door to the NHS.

“I want to work with GPs to rebuild our NHS, so it is there for all of us when we need it.”

With hard-working GP teams delivering millions more appointments a month compared to before the pandemic, it is vital they are given the resources to manage this increase in demand

Dr Amanda Doyle, NHS England’s national director for primary care and community services, added: “With hard-working GP teams delivering millions more appointments a month compared to before the pandemic, it is vital they are given the resources to manage this increase in demand.

“Adding General Practitioners to the scheme is something that the profession has been calling for in recent months to make it easier for practices to hire more staff – so I welcome this measure which is an important first step to increasing GP employment in the long-term.

“We will continue to work with GPs, the BMA and the government to avert any potential action but in the meantime, the NHS has a duty to plan for any possible disruption to ensure services continue to be provided for patients – so the public should continue to come forward for care in the normal way if collective action does go ahead.”