Temporary returner GPs will be removed from the Emergency Registered Practitioner (ERP) register at the end of the month, NHS England has reminded practices.
The register was created in March 2020 to allow former GPs temporarily help with the Covid-19 effort, made possible via emergency legislation brought in at the start of the pandemic.
GP partners are advised to check that any GPs they employed throughout the emergency period who intend to work beyond 30 September are ‘legally able to do so’.
NHS England said in a primary care bulletin: ‘The Emergency Registered Practitioner (ERP) provisions, which were created to allow suitable doctors to gain temporary emergency registration or a licence to practise in order to support the Covid-19 pandemic, will be repealed on 30 September 2022.
GPs under ERP provisions on the performers list after September will be removed from the list and not allowed to work in general practice, NHS England said.
It added that it has worked with those on the list ‘to ensure that should they wish to remain in practice beyond the emergency period, they were supported to do so’.
In summer last year, the GMC contacted thousands of returner GPs with advice on how to permanently restore their licence.
Pulse revealed that 8,224 GPs held a temporary licence as of July 2021, down from 8,306 in October 2020.
But a GMC survey of around 4,000 of those returners at the end of 2020 showed only one in six would ‘possibly’, or be ‘highly likely’ to, restore their routine registration.
