Exclusive GPs will be paid £12.58 per Covid vaccination jab administered – but will only receive payment after the second of two doses – as details are due today about the DES at the heart of the campaign.
Pulse understands this will make the campaign ‘cost neutral’ for practices, and that GPs will be expected to continue with other duties including QOF and other DESs.
However, despite the workload implications, some GP leaders argued it was GPs’ ‘moral duty’ to take part and the BMA said GPs are ‘absolutely the right people’ to lead on the vaccination campaign.
In the first instance, practices will be expected to work together in their local area, initially with vaccinations taking place at one site – most likely a nominated practice, the BMA has said.
CCGs will be given £150m to support practices with the rollout of the vaccination campaign, to be distributed as £2.72 per patient in their population.
The BMA has said the programme should be ready for 1 December, although the timing for when jabs can be administered depends on when the MHRA can approve a vaccine.
Both of the two vaccinations in the running to be approved by the MHRA before the end of this year require patients to have two doses.
And earlier this week, NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens acknowledged the ‘logistical challenges’ for GPs, as one of those needs to be stored at -70C.
Pulse also understands this vaccine is kept in 1,000-dose vials and is mixed with saline. It needs to be defrosted and used within five days.
The vaccines are also expected to have side effects, including a temperature, which raised questions about what this meant for take-up as well as self-isolation requirements.
Leading figures have this week confirmed that two vaccine trials are due to report before the end of the year, and new legislation means MHRA can give these a temporary license for immediate distribution.
The UK will have four million doses manufactured of the vaccine being developed by Astra Zeneca and the University of Oxford before the end of this year, and 10 million doses of the vaccine being developed in the US by pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
Changes to the Human Medicines Act, which came into force last month, means a wider range of workforce can be trained to administer Covid jabs.
The Government has also prepared by ordering syringes ahead of the campaign, including an order of 65 million syringes that were due for delivery in September.
Please note – the headline and top line originally contained an incorrect figure. The actual amount is £12.58 per jab. We apologise for this.
READERS' COMMENTS [39]
Please note, only GPs are permitted to add comments to articles
If in 1000 dose vials will need to be administered at scale eg by CCGs not individual practices. If no payment unless patient comes back for second dose that will be a lot of unpaid work for all those who only have 1 dose. Who thought up with, and accepted, this?!
We need to be paid after the first dose.
No other professional group would accept taking on an enormous amount of work like without timely remuneration.
So we are punished for patients not turning up for the second dose…..insanity……
I imagine government messaging about the 2 required injection will be as muddled as every other message they have given!
Hmm let’s see:
Patient has first jab
Feels unwell due to temperature
Doesn’t attend for second jab
GP gets paid nothing
Wonderful.
1000 unit vial, 5 days, each one needing drawing up and mixing , say 10 minutes per appointment at best, that is 2000 minutes per day. so 33 hours of vaccinations per day. so 4 members of staff doing 8+ hours of vaccinating for 5 days. with no promise of money if side effects are too great.
Just looked at the tweet above.
‘Covid-19 and its mutations threaten the existence of the human race.’
In order to save humanity, maybe they could pay a wee bit more.
Only get paid IF the patient comes back for the second jab. Why would any sane person agree to this? More significantly – why would the employer ASK for this (unless there is something in it for them). I have thought about it and basically – you can fu*k off.
you have to decide NOW (i.e. before nov 13th) which practice in your pcn is willing to be available seven days a week to do this work. you then have to give both jabs in order to get paid – no second jab = no pay.
why would anybody – even someone on minimum wage, agree to this treatment by an employer ?
just say “no thankyou, i’d rather be making mince pies”
no agreement at all in wales at the moment – not sure which is worse !
Storage -70C, then 1000 doses per vial, use it in 5 days. Inject 200 doses per day. Gp and practice nurses can’t stop doing day to day work.
How would small practices with one GP and one nurse do this??
Mind boggling.
Patient should wait for several minutes before they leave premises (15 minutes not to drive)
Where is patient suppose to wait if surgery doors are closed?!
Hmmmm. Walk the dog on a saturday morning (and live longer as a result) or PAY TO work instead?
What people are overlooking, is that if we give up our saturdays to do this our ‘earnings’ will be seen to increase…..which means they will ‘claw it back’ through reduced global sum increases in the next few years.
This is an invitation to pay do work at below cost, then PAY a bit more to do it at our leisure by installments.
The Duncan Bannatyne response…..I’m out!
Clearly nobody did basic NHS maths:
Question 1
If a Practice is having to triage any old crap people can come up with, see the serious stuff face to face and continue with QOF and maintain social distancing with between 15-26% of staff unavailable at any one time due to Covid. How many square metres and overtime hours will it take to administer a vaccination (twice) to its registered list ?
Question2 if the vaccination is paid at X per dose but only if people return for their second doses and Y% fail to do so, show an equation that expresses the income likely to be received which enables all of this to be cost neutral?
Question 3 Where is the missing calculation to downgrade some of the routine work to allow the above to fit into available time ( calculations regarding time travel and cloning staff will be allowed)
Ahh Primary care the only part of the NHS which it is considered as having no limits to its capacity .
And we will do it because unlike all the other Covid tasks and contracts handed out to private companies we care and we go the extra mile. Cost neutral of course.
I think all those who have COVID in Whitehall and NHSE must have cerebral Long Covid.They seem to think we are as stupid and incompetent as they are ,imbeciles👎.
Also, why: “this will make the campaign ‘cost neutral’ for practices”
If I’m working harder I should be earning more. Why cost neutral? The government will literally hand out BILLIONS for a non-working test and trace system (and PPE) but won’t pay Doctors properly for real work.
No doubt the bma apologists will be along soon to tell us how it’s the GP’s privilege and civic duty to subsidise this important work.
It’s NOT cost neutral. I have a 30k patient practice and economies of scale that most can only dream of.
This is VERY different to giving flu vaccines, not least because patients have to remain on site for 20 mins after the vaccine, maintaining social distancing AND whilst the building is busy doing its normal workload.
Walking my DOG is cost neutral.
What a crock – as usual. When the punter doesn’t show for the second shot, there’s no payment for the first – i.e. work for free – modern slavery.
Orwellian ‘doublethink’ – profess to value and maintain the NHS (primary care level) while constantly undermining it.
should be payment per dose and bonus payment if course completed
Non-attendance for second dose likely to be huge, especially if side-effects are common. After Twitter has spread the word about how horribly ill it will make you feel, huge swathes of people will gamble on “just one dose”.
Whoever dreamt up non-payment for one dose is a genius. An evil genius.
The degree of incompetence of the BMA is beyond belief.I think it’s best for all those folks in big shines hospital hearing scrubs and masks can do it .When they make a loss HMG rights off their debts.Afterall they are proper Drs not lazy good for nothing GPS.Bet they also have -70 freezers already as 15 k per pop.No no and thrice No .
Anyone on GPC who voted for this care to explain why? You seem to have sold your exhausted colleagues a lovely fait accompli. Bravo.
I’d like to follow whatever Taiwan, Japan and South Korea are doing. Clearly there’s something in English air that results in frontal disinhbition to blurt out verbal diarrhoea, reactive “leadership” and myopic ideas.
I think its everyones moral duty who works in the NHS to deliver this vaccination. Lets get all those surgeons whose elective lists have been cancelled this winter trained up to deliver this new vaccine.
I cannot understand why this extra work has to be cost neutral. I know where they can put their ‘civic duty’
Simple. The DES is agreeable if, and only if, both doses are paid for, at 12.58 PER dose. AND iif the practices receive serious ‘cash in hand’ funding for extra capacity (locum cover, backfill extra GP time etc). The service hasn’t got the capacity as it stands and it’s early November. This is a negotiation. Refuse the first offer and demand better for your patients. You know how crap the service is at present.
Fortunately there are always a few cardies who will happily give up their free time to prop up the NHS and happily pay for the privilege. Well done guys, good job!
Er, is there some sort of expectation that GPs will do them all? Like, c 50 million people x 2 doses?
Mammoth undertaking.
Politically correct wording chosen : ‘moral duty’ , ‘absolutely the right people ‘ .
I would like the political implications, if any , behind these . One can criticise me of over-interpretation .
The correct logistics must also be in place . What is gonna happen to the everyday workload of the ‘chosen one’ practice locally ?The other practices are to cover for it instead ??
One thing I would say is ,we do not need to do things to prove our innocence after being sabotaged by the media and NHSE’s fiasco in the fable of GP practices not being open during the first wave of the pandemic.
Biggest vaccine programme ever, run noraml services , ‘cost neutral’ – yeah right! This will cost time, money and morale, once again picking up the slack at out own cost. Madness for PCNs to sign up to this.
Needs to be protected time for delivery, money to cover extra costs etc. When will GPs wake up and stand up ?
Whenever any other contractor does something for the NHS (Test and Trace, PPE etc) it is understood that the company will return a profit.
When GPs do something – it has to be for cost (whilst ALSO carrying the business risk of things like the patient not returning for Injection 2 and therefore not getting paid).
FFS GPs: LEARN TO SAY NO!
Seems unlikely that this will be simple to do and give the opportunity for the Daily Mail to blame greedy, fat cat ,lazy GPs if or when the plan fails!
£150m for CCGs is a joke compared to billions spent on test and trace. Payment for jabs cost neutral for Gps yet consultants paid £7,000 per day for T and T. Shows us how valued we are in the scheme of things
Time for…..
…. a strongly worded letter to the government from the BMA.
Look upon their works and weep, mortals.
Thank goodness I left partnership at 56.25 and now salaried in a very interesting clinical post using all my experience.
None of this utter bullshit.
Just making people better, what I trained to do.
A new lease of life, too.
just say no?
are gps covered for any claims?
monkeys and peanuts–bma will never get you the correct money
why so many replies moderated?
I genuinely understand the concerns about where is the extra time coming from to do this: will it mean cutting clinics? Which staff will do it? What hours of the day will be required to meet the des? But I also question the agenda of the comments here. Most posters on pulse are of the opinion the the job of a GP used to be great and now, with every new change, it is becoming more and more diabolical. Rose tinted spectacles perhaps worn by some rather jaded characters in an echo chamber of disdain.
I am keen to find out how opinions align if we take a step back and think this is additional money that you can chose to accept, and at £25 after the second vaccine per patient,it doesn’t seem like a bad deal to open our practices beyond usual hours with our ancillary staff and even the odd partner rolling their sleeves up and getting stuck in as a collective.
I feel that now is the time to focus on the fortunate position we are in being (a) able to work (b) paid well with good pensions (braces self) and ultimately (c) thinking about why we all went into practicing medicine in the first place.
Always open to feedback.