GMC ‘close’ to eliminating disproportionate referrals of minority doctors
Exclusive The GMC is ‘close’ to eliminating disproportionate referrals of ethnic minority doctors, its chief executive has told a Pulse event.
It comes as the regulator committed to eliminating disproportionate employer fitness-to-practise referrals of doctors from an ethnic minority, who are more likely to be referred to the GMC, by the end of this year.
Speaking at Pulse LIVE in Cardiff today, Charlie Massey said that the regulator has made ‘significant headway’ towards their goal, but that it won’t know for sure whether this has been achieved until next year.
Primary care tends to have disproportionate referrals of ethnic minority doctors ‘more often’ than other types of NHS employers, according to GMC research.
Mr Massey also said that Pulse’s findings around GPs practising defensive medicine due to fears of referrals were ‘concerning’ and added that a lack of confidence in the GMC is ‘encouraging more defensive approaches’.
On eliminating disproportionality, he said: ‘Our most recent data showed that designated bodies in primary care were more likely to have disproportionate referral rates than others elsewhere in the system.
‘We have made significant headway and we are actually now close to achieving our goal of eliminating that disproportionality in employer referrals.
‘It just simply can’t be right that some groups of doctors have markedly different experiences in the workplace, and as a consequence, are more likely to be referred to us by their employer, and that’s why we remain committed to eliminating those disparities wherever we find them.’
When asked by Pulse when the goal would be achieved, he added: ‘We won’t know for sure until a later point in time, because by definition we have to collect the data in a way that enables us to analyse it, so we probably won’t know that for certain until we’re well into 2027, but we are well on the way.’
He said that GPs are working ‘under such challenging circumstances’ that it is ‘understandable’ that the possibility of a complaint or of a regulatory investigation can ‘weigh really heavily’ on them, and when complaints from members of the public are rising, it is ‘understandable that those worries can be amplified’.
Mr Massey told the audience: ‘We’ve seen evidence of the impact that can have in the recent Pulse white paper, with reports of more GPs practicing defensively because of fears about consequences, both from regulatory investigations and complaints being handled through their employer.
‘Those findings are concerning, but perhaps not entirely surprising, we regularly survey doctors about their perceptions of our work, including our fitness to practice processes, and in our 2025 survey, just 27% of GPs felt that the GMC would deal with concerns about them fairly and appropriately, taking the context in which they work into account.
‘And that’s troubling, and it matters in its own right, because it can create anxiety and uncertainty for doctors already working under intense pressure.
‘But it also has wider consequences if it’s encouraging more defensive approaches to care and affecting the culture of openness and learning that underpins patient safety, so it is a real priority for us to build doctors’ confidence in how we handle complaints made to us.’
It follows a Pulse survey which found that four in five GPs say that the growing threat of complaints has led them to practise ‘defensive medicine’, potentially worsening patient care and access to general practice.
Although GP confidence in the GMC has improved, earlier this year fewer than half (42%) of GPs said they are confident in its regulation of doctors.
Mr Massey also said that, despite those fears, ‘the overwhelming majority’ of GPs will never find themselves subject to a fitness to practise investigation.
In 2024, according to GMC data, the number of cases involving GPs that went to a tribunal was the equivalent of one for every 1,400 licensed GPs.
In 2024, as disparities in fitness to practise referrals based on ethnicity continued to reduce from previous years, the GMC admitted that more needed to be done.
