A report released by the Institute for Public Policy Research has suggested that GPs become salaried employees within the NHS.
Today’s publication, titled ‘Realising the neighbourhood NHS: Delivering a new deal for primary care in England’, said that all GPs should be offered the right to NHS employment.
Amid plans for the remodelling of the practice model, it also emphasises that all newly-qualified GPs should be offered a salaried NHS position, and that in the short-term GPs should have the right to refuse this offer and maintain their partnership model. However, it urges policymakers over time to consider ending the right of partnerships to create new or replace existing partnership roles.
The report’s other recommendations are that:
- Neighbourhood care providers (NCPs) should be created to deliver a ‘neighbourhood NHS’;
- New GP roles should be reformed, to create career progression, time to care and realistic workload;
- The primary care infrastructure should undergo radical transformation.
Quality; access; workforce; and demographics are the key factors investigated in the study of the prospective future of the profession.
As part of the four main components it argues for a ‘new deal’ for general practice to overcome existing challenges, it puts forward the suggestion of senior GPs, both partners and salaried, being recruited into management roles within the new NCPs.
These would be on similar salaries to current partners, and sit alongside other non-clinical senior managers.
The authors acknowledged that while the concept of salaried roles in the NHS may seem ‘radical’, it is ‘starting to happen already’.
They continued: ‘The partnership model is in decline with the number of partners reducing year-on-year.
‘Even in the short time since the Five Year Forward View was published, salaried GPs have increased by 3,000, and now make up nearly a third of all GPs, whilst partners have decreased in numbers by a similar amount.’
