Following on from Rosie’s article last month, you may have seen, or are likely to become aware of, NHS England’s contract offer to general practice. The headline is a 1.9% increase to be added to the G.P. contract – so around £1.90 per patient per annum.
G.P.s who belong to the B.M.A. were invited to accept/reject this offer. Of the 19,000 who voted, 99.2% rejected the offer.
However, this contract (as is usual) was still imposed by the Government on General Practice and became effective from April.
A few useful headlines:
G.P.s see the equivalent of half the U.K. population every month
1,000 G.P. practices have closed in recent years – 106 in the past year alone
19,000 fewer full time G.P.s and each full time G.P. is now responsible for an average of 2294 patients – an increase of 356 (18%) from 1938 patients in 2015
6,000,000 more patients on practice registers
400,000,000 G.P. consultations per annum
5-6% of overall N.H.S. funding is spent on general practice
General Practice accounts for around 5% of all N.H.S. staff
Overspend in General Practice – zero
The financial viability of some Practices will undoubtedly be challenged and it is likely there will be further closures.
Tisbury Surgery will naturally continue to work hard to deliver the best service that we can, but our investment in services that we would like to develop may be less than we had hoped, and some staff recruitment plans will be put on hold.
None of us knows what is ahead politically but whichever party is elected we would hope that general practice might be awarded an increase that will allow us to expand rather than have to consider contraction of services (with likely consequent increase in patients admitted to hospital).
We would like to develop our range of services rather than have to use a 1.9% increase to help pay our electricity bill!
Dr. Adam Smith
GP partner