Practice advertises salaried post after making three GPs redundant

A Surrey GP practice is re-hiring for a salaried GP after making three doctors redundant earlier this year on cost grounds.

In January, Glenlyn Medical Centre announced it was making three GPs redundant – pointing to ‘new ways of working’, including virtual appointments and the use of ARRS staff.

All 11 salaried GPs were invited to take voluntary redundancy, and the three who took up the offer left at the end of March.

Following the announcement, Pulse revealed that the GP partners had not taken drawings in the last year and that the practice was ‘running at a loss’, needing to save £350,000 annually.

However, the management team is now hiring for a full-time salaried GP to join the 18,000-patient practice.

GP partner Dr Richard Strickland told Pulse that the new advert is to replace one of the salaried GPs who recently left, and is unrelated to the redundancies. 

‘It’s not connected to previous changes we made to our practice team and reflects our commitment to making sure our patients have access to a GP, when they need it,’ he said.

The job advert, which was posted last week and is open until the end of April, said the new GP will be working alongside a team of advanced nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and paramedics.

According to the practice website, there are currently five salaried GPs working at the practice, down from the 11 who were working there in December. 

NHS figures also show that the practice’s patient list has dropped by more than 1,000 since December, from 19,106 to 18,040 this month.

Although data from the last 12 months showed that the list size had been falling steadily since April 2023, when there were 19,834 patients, this represents a much faster drop-off rate in the last four months.

Minutes from a meeting in December, obtained by Pulse, had revealed that the practice was running 20 GP sessions a week that it could not afford.

According to the management team, ‘only changes to the numbers of GPs’ would make a difference to their financial position, and that simply reducing sessions was ‘unlikely’ to ‘cover the cost of the deficit’.

In response to the news of redundancies earlier this year, Surrey and Sussex LMCs chair Dr Julius Parker, who is also the BMA GPCE deputy chair, highlighted the need for GPs to be included in the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS). 

But the Government refused to meet this BMA ask in the 2024/25 contract, arguing that GPs are ‘not additional’, and the funding is not designed to ‘compensate for a shortage of core capacity’. 

The doctors’ union has this week confirmed it is ‘in dispute’ with NHS England over the 2024/25 contract, citing the lack of funding to hire GPs as a ‘main concern’. 

GPCE chair Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer has previously warned that general practice has suddenly gone from a recruitment to an employment crisis, driven by the Government’s squeeze on practice finances.

And Pulse recently revealed that a number of recruitment agencies are telling practices not to ‘waste money’ on GP locums as physician associates ‘can work like a GP’. 

Last month, the new owner of GP at Hand, eMed, announced a large-scale redundancy consultation which could affect as many as 150 clinicians.