NHS England’s plans for SAS doctors to work as ‘primary care doctors’ in GP practices are ‘colluding in the demise of the profession’, the BMA’s GP committee chair has said.
Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer said that the commissioner’s plans for Specialty and Associate Specialist (SAS) doctors to work in general practice are likely to cause a more ‘toxic’ and ‘stressful’ debate than the one about physician associates.
Speaking at an online roadshow last week, she added that NHS England is ‘putting pilots in place’ for SAS doctors to work in GP practices across the country and that these are ‘colluding in the demise of the profession’.
Dr Bramall-Stainer said: ‘Primary care doctors are the name from NHS England, for any doctor who can now practice in a GP setting.
‘You know how there’s always been the performers list and how you had to be a GP to work in general practice. It’s gone now. You can be a consultant, you can be a staff grade doctor, you can be someone who’s just finished their foundation training.
‘But the point about primary care doctors is that if you think the physician associate debate has been toxic and hurtful and stressful for you, as a GP, witnessing what you’ve witnessed – it’s child’s play, compared to the primary care doctors’ debate, and that’s happening now and it’s starting now and NHS England are putting pilots in place.’
NHS England told Pulse that has already spoken about this area of work as mentioned in the recovery plan last year, but refused to give specific details about the pilots.
Dr Bramall-Stainer added: ‘If you come across them, feedback to your LMC. If you collude in garnering more evidence for NHSE then you are colluding in the demise of your profession.
‘They have disinvested 52% from GMS comparing 2022/23 with 2007/08. There is far more data in GP settings than trusts, our contracts are scrutinised so much more than trusts.
‘The only thing ICBs and NHSE care about is them hitting financial balance – by whatever means it takes – no matter how much workload is dumped on you.’
As announced in the recovery plan in June last year, the Government and NHS England will work together to ‘ensure that doctors other than GPs are more easily able to work in primary care’,
According to the plan, the medical workforce ‘is expected to change over the next 15 years’, with more SAS doctors and doctors in training choosing different career paths including general practice.
Ensuring that doctors other than GPs can work easily in primary care will give general practice additional capacity, improving patient access and creating opportunities for these doctors to develop and progress in their careers, the plan said.
But the idea has proved controversial, with the BMA saying that the proposal could cause doctors to be open to exploitation under a ‘two-tier system’.
And LMC leaders called on the BMA to reject proposals which would allow SAS doctors to work in general practice as primary care doctors.
My concern here is the unfair playing field where only hospital trust run practices can employ these doctors in Primary Care.
Don’t get why BMA getting worked up about this plan, while it took them ages to see the threat from unregulated PAs, and have been blind to all the other crap this Govt have been pouring on GPs’ heads for years. General practice needs more GPs. SAS are doctors, as PAs are noctors.
In fact all GPs were hospital doctors prior to their GP training and conversion. So why not take on SAS doctors (many of them IMG) into general practice, giving them a period of GP training to understand the special and peculiar aspects of how we work, manage everything coming through the door, learn to manage and live with uncertainty, and boost GP numbers plus funding. Better than the other fragmenting NHSE ideas that have been reported on over the last year.
Am I missing something about why the GPC is up in arms about this “issue”?