NHS England has announced it will publish information about individual practices’ gross income this summer – and will also push ahead with plans to publish GPs’ net pay.
The GPC said the decision was ‘unfortunate’ and warned that publishing practice earnings would not give a full picture of NHS spending in a particular area.
The move to greater transparency on GP earnings was first announced as part of the 2014/15 contract deal, with ministers pledging that GPs’ net NHS earnings relating to the contract would be published from April 2015.
An NHS England spokesperson said: ‘Subject to discussions with the profession, NHS England plans to publish audited financial data on payments made to GP practices for the 2013/14 financial year in the summer.’
‘In 2015/16, we plan to publish audited data showing net pay to GPs, again subject to discussions with the profession. This follows agreement to do so in this year’s contract negotiations.’
The figures on net GP pay are expected to represent average GP earnings in each practice, rather than individual GPs’ salaries.
GPC deputy chair Dr Richard Vautrey said of the decision to publish practice income this year: ‘It is unfortunate that they have decided to publish it in this way because it will not inform patients at all. You have to look at the full picture of healthcare spending in a locality.’
‘However, we recognise that information on gross resource is already publicly available.’
Dr Vautrey added that the GPC had not yet agreed to any proposals on how NHS England could publish net GP pay.
He said: ‘No, the contract agreement is clear in that we agreed for a working group to be established to look at this. Net pay relates to individual GP income and at the moment that information is not publicly available, and indeed isn’t produced. That is why we agreed to establish a working group to look at how that might be done in a meaningful way.’
