PCNs employing ‘cheaper’ hospital consultants instead of GPs

Some PCNs in Manchester are employing ‘cheaper’ hospital consultants instead of GPs where they were struggling to recruit.

Speaking on collaboration at Pulse PCN’s Leeds conference last week (27 June), Dr Tracey Vell, chief officer at Greater Manchester Primary Care Provider Board, said some PCNs in her area were employing gynaecologists to do proactive care.

‘We have hospital consultants now employed instead of GPs in some of our PCNs because they couldn’t find a GP,’ she said. ‘And actually, they’re cheaper.’

‘We’ve got some gynaecologists working now who are doing proactive care programmes.’

She said that the responsibility for proactive care was given to the ICB along with around £500,000 in funding because they are in the space and could get care closer to home. 

Also at the event, Dr Rajiv Wadhwa, clinical director at Across Leicester PCN, called on PCNs to stop apologising for access.

‘We’re all working as hard as we can, much harder than we should,’ he said. ‘I don’t think any of us can do any more. I think we need to stop saying access is very good, because it’s not. But stop apologising for it.

‘It’s not my fault and I’m not going to take the blame for that.’

He said this had been the strategy in Leicester for the past five or six years, and it has taken until then to get the local councillors and ICB ‘on our side’.

Delegates at the conference also heard that social prescribing has reduced ‘failure demand’ and therefore GP time at Sort Valley and Villages PCN, Hertfordshire and West Essex.

Clinical director Dr Sian Stanley said it would be ‘mad’ to withdraw social prescriber funding because of this.

‘Failure demand is a term that is about the fact that if you can’t give patients what they want in the first meeting, they keep coming back, so you get appointments you don’t want and they don’t want and you just keep going in that loop,’ she said.

Instead of this, their social prescribers can listen to patients and explore their issues, she added.

Social prescribers are currently the third most popular ARRS role, with 2,845 employed across PCNs as of April 2024.

It comes as an exclusive survey found that PCNs have improved patient care and access.

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