The next issue of GP newspaper you receive will be dated 5 August . The following one will be with you 2 September.
Far from putting our feet up in the intervening weeks, we’re actually pulling out all the stops to produce the same quality of coverage each day here at GPonline.com.
It’s that crazy time of year again when the various august
bodies overseeing general practice publish their opinions on how little the
profession is worth.
GPs themselves, in the ample form of the BMA, put in an
optimistic request for a 2% rise, demonstrating a modest sense of
self-respect and an acknowledgement of the difficult economic climate.
The NHS Employers suggested a headline uplift in
funding of 1%, which didn’t sound too bad on first look given the
crushing disappointments of previous years. But the rider was that efficiency
savings would be necessary to secure any real rise in pay.
Chancellor Alistair Darling decided that GPs should be singled out for a total pay freeze in
2010/11. And there was even more devilishness in the detail of the DoH’s
submission to the DDRB, with a warning that protecting the salaries and pay
differentials of particular groups was not part of its job description. Hence the
DoH’s suggestion that only GP partners should actually receive nothing – while salaried
colleagues should be given a 1% rise.
Many in the profession will no doubt argue that there are
good reasons for reducing the differential between salaried GPs and partners,
but is this the way to do it? The DoH is acting in a partisan fashion to
exploit the divides between different sectors of the profession, and in doing
so drags the Review Body system down to a new low.
The news that the Press Complaints Commission is investigating the Daily Mail’s coverage of GP pay should be welcomed.
I can’t believe it referred once again to the ‘The GP who earns £380,000′ headline in its edition Wednesday when covering dentist pay.
Take one look at the latest income figures for general practice and it’s easy to see why the government is so confident in its manipulation of the profession.
It’s often been said that organising GPs is like herding cats, but general practice today is a mosaic of its former self. One could even go so far as to suggest that WH Auden would have swapped his elderly fizzog for the current face of the profession.
Is there anyone left in the country who truly understands the GP pay system?
Even if the negotiating teams understand the system on paper, can they really predict what will happen when they start twiddling knobs and pressing buttons?
So at last it’s out in the open. The figure we had all been waiting for has finally been uttered.
The GPC is seeking a 4 per cent rise in practice income for next year. In other words, double the rise that NHS Employers recommended in their evidence to the Review Body.
Just when you thought the world was finally starting to accept that GPs’ pay is declining – as opposed to rising by ‘eye watering’ amounts – the issue is back on the front pages.
As the annual pay negotiations begin, and the BMA calls for a 4 per cent increase, the national newspapers have unearthed financial incentives for GPs to cut referrals.They have also managed to add these up into tens of thousands of pounds ‘for the average practice’, and cause a national outrage in the process.
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