ARRS funding to hire GPs must be provided to practices directly rather than to PCNs, the BMA has demanded in a letter to the health secretary.
At the beginning of this month, the Government agreed to fund the ARRS with an extra £82m to allow PCNs to hire GPs, with this funding intended cover the cost of 1,000 extra GPs.
The expansion of the scheme, badged as an ‘emergency measure’ for 2024/25, aimed to allow practices to hire recently-qualified GPs who face potential unemployment this summer.
And NHS England later revealed that the £82m will be ‘ring-fenced’ solely for the employment of GPs, to ensure the reimbursement of existing ARRS staff ‘is not impacted’.
But the BMA has said it is concerned that providing the funding at PCN level does not provide GPs ‘with the desperately needed stability required’.
A letter, signed by sessional GPs committee chair Dr Mark Steggles, GP registrars committee chair Dr Malinga Ratwatte and GP committee England deputy chair Dr Samira Anane, argued that the funding should instead be provided at practice level.
‘We believe it would be far more effective to provide this funding at a practice level, helping to address GP unemployment in the places most severely affected,’ they told Wes Streeting.
‘Whilst the scheme will go some way to abating the GP unemployment crisis among newly qualified GPs, unfortunately it does little to ensure the retention or engagement of established and experienced GPs, who are also struggling to find NHS work.’
The GP leaders argued that GPs employed through the scheme ‘may be forced’ to move across the country at short notice, ‘uprooting their families and depriving their patients of continuity of care, for the sake of what could be a six-month contract’.
They added that working across multiple practices within a PCN, each having ‘their own unique ways of working’, can be a ‘daunting’ prospect for even the most established of GPs.
The letter also demanded that the salaried GPs recruited by PCNs are employed on BMA model contracts ‘with clear and safe job plans’.
It added: ‘Unfortunately, we are aware that some ICBs are employing salaried GPs on less favourable terms that do not match the BMA salaried GP model contract which we have agreed with the NHS Confederation.
‘It is imperative that the model contract is used by all NHS employers of salaried GPs. If this isn’t ensured, we risk salaried GPs not being offered the same fundamental benefits, such as holiday and sick pay, that other doctors receive across the NHS, undermining parity of esteem and making these roles less attractive, which puts the success of the scheme at risk.’
The letter added that investment to ‘reverse the contract value erosion’ is ‘much needed’, and one way to address this would be re-allocating the funding for the ARRS into core GP practice funding – a measure which has been brought up before.
‘In the long-term, GP contract funding must be increased so practices have full control over who they recruit to best serve their patients’ needs without the need for additional schemes like ARRS,’ it concluded.
Pulse has looked in detail at what is currently known (and unknown) about the new policy.
The funding to hire GPs under the ARRS is expected to become available from October.
Following the expansion of the scheme, Mr Streeting said he wants ‘to reset the relationship between GPs and the Government’, in a letter sent to the profession.
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The BMA should in my opinion, ensure there are no PCN CDs on the negotiating committees as they will be conflicted by their ongoing unjustified imo huge personal gains for basic PCN admin work and often pointless meetings pursuing a destructive agenda at the clear expense of colleagues, patients and the wider Primary Care community in many cases extending over years.
A discussion aimed at protecting the futures of newly qualified and established GPs whatever the particular career path chosen e.g. locum, salaried or partner etc. would be self-defeating if PCN CDs who have actively pursued a course in my view directly against the interest of their colleagues, Primary care and patients are involved in any aspect.
GP ARR Funding should be removed from the control of GP PCN CDs and PCNs who are not cost effective, wasteful and produce highly inefficient schemes often chosen to be superficially centred around health inequality but more often(not always) addressing their own egos rather than the health inequality itself.
Funding should be moved to core practice funding in order that the specific demographics dictating practice decisions can be addressed and not subject to self-selected PCN CD obstructions who are more interested in their pointless meetings and CD payments thereby avoiding wasted millions occurring within PCNs.
Funding from the same recycled names often (not always) PCN CDs undertaking simple admin work and often in position by default should be moved from these self-indulgent groups to Practice Managers within practices who are often the staff still undertaking much of the day-to-day work