Creeping Privatisation of our NHS?

I agree on your timing maddyone I haven’t booked, I’ll probably wait until OH gets his, he’s 7 years younger, then we’ll book both.

Thanks Jaxjacky the advice was given to me by a GP, also a member of my family, so good advice I think.

Annie could you recommend the surgeries to me where all the GPs earn £100,000 a year please. My daughter and her husband would absolutely love a job in one of those surgeries.

The simple truth is that very, very few GPs earn that kind of money. It’s ignorance of the facts that makes people post untruths. It’s fed by the right wing, tabloid papers, principally the Daily Mail, who are always having a go at the GPs and unfortunately there are plenty of people who believe it, simply because they don’t actually know any better. Of course the Daily Mail can always find the one GP who actually manages to earn that kind of money, but probably because he or she works out of hours as well. My son in law worked out of hours alongside his GP role. It was evening work after his shift at the surgery till about midnight usually, or weekend work. He still didn’t earn that kind of money. Incidentally the GPs you speak to when they phone you back after calling 111 are the very same GPs who are working during the day in your surgeries.

With regard to part time GPs, well my daughter was one of them, until she left to go to work in New Zealand, where apparently GPs are treated with rather more respect than here in the UK. Anyway she has seven year old twins and a three year old. Are you suggesting that she should have worked full time rather than the three days she did work Annie? I thought that the majority of Gransnetters agree with women having more rights, such as the right to choose to work part time when they have young children, but maybe I’m wrong. Or is just GPs that shouldn’t have that right Annie?

Many of our GPs are women and many of them have young children. That’s often why they work part time. Sometimes GPs choose to work part time in the surgery because they work as out of hours GPs too. I think we all want a GP to be available when we need one during the night or at weekends don’t we?

Maddyone our GPS and Practice Nurses all the the vaccinations on specific Saturdays throughout October. So some surgeries yes the Doctors also take part. Xx

bobbydog24. Yes that what a text from my GP said I was surprised about the booster but as I said it gave me the choice both to gether or seperate.

I had to go to my surgery yesterday and I asked the practice Nurse about the letter from Lloyds that I had also received, she said to ignore it , that our surgery was more than capable of providing Flu jabs and , if necessary a booster Covid jab at the same time.

Thanks ladies. Sometimes I get fed up with having to untangle the facts from the fiction with regard to GPs, but I do keep trying. I totally understand that the service has been stretched during Covid, for all the same reasons everywhere has been stretched, staff having to isolate, and staff getting ill with Covid themselves, and it’s not as easy to recruit a few more GPs as perhaps some other jobs, but I do feel obligated to explain the truth about some of the myths being spread. Or complaints that GPs work part time (well obviously if they’re parents of young children.) It’s good to hear so many people are getting their flu jabs at the surgery, because as I said before, the small payment does not go into individual GPs pockets, but instead into the pot which pays for everything that is needed to run the surgeries.

Maddyone
I think you misinterpreted me! I didn’t mean they were paid for flu jabs. I did mean that seeing more patients online rather than face to face, means more patients can be seen and as far as I know they are paid per patient seen. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
Our surgery the other day when I actually managed to get an appointment after six months of phone calls had only three patients waiting.
We cannot even make appointments at the moment as we are told all our doctors have no appointments free, ring back in two weeks and ask again.
I cannot understand why they are not seeing patients as they used to. The government advised them in May that they should go back to seeing patients face to face but it is just not happening where I live. I would love an explaination for this if you know the reason for this as I don’t like being cynical!

A day in the life of a GP. A film uploaded 5 August 2021.

Dr Abbie Brooks, a GP Partner at Priory Medical Group in York, shares a day in her life to highlight the work that goes on behind the scenes at practices as staff strive to offer the best possible care to patients.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaAX0S3MbOc

Thank you for the video Silverbridge, it’s extremely informative. I really hope those who are complaining about their GPs watch it, but actually I doubt they will, because they don’t really want to understand what happens in General Practice.

Cambia, GPs are not, and have never been paid per consultation. They are paid on average £155 per patient per year. Regardless of how many times a patient consults with the GP or even if the patient never consults the GP in that year, the Practice will receive £155 for the treatment of that patient. A patient who never consults the GP in a particular year is likely to still require reviews for a variety of conditions such as asthma or diabetes, and a flu vaccine, and possibly other vaccines for holidays, (probably not since Covid) and also all prescriptions need to be reviewed by the doctor regularly and of course repeat prescriptions are needed. £155 is not a lot for the service given in my humble opinion. Life would be very different without our NHS.

Anyway GP Practice payment is very complicated. I’m rubbish at loading links, but

The Kings Fund, GP funding and contracts explained

is a website that explains exactly how GPs are funded, and what they’re contracted to do by the NHS. It’s interesting reading, and shows that GP funding and contracts are not a simple matter, as many posters seem to think.

Thanks, maddyone. I think it's all too easy to lose sight of how much "invisible" work GPs and their staff do and how his new way of managing patients helps them to prioritise cases.

I think this must be the website you wanted to link to:

www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/gp-funding-and-contracts-explained

I was fascinated reading about the global sum allocation (Carr Hill formula). NHS England have PDF documents that can be downloaded showing just how complex this calculation is and the many factors that have to be taken into account.

Thank you for posting the link Silverbridge, I do really hope some posters who don’t understand the situation (and it is very complicated) will read it and it will help them understand a little at least. My daughter was a Practice Partner (before she fled to New Zealand) and she had additional responsibilities, whilst my son in law chose to be a salaried GP, but worked many more hours as an Out of Hours GP, including a huge amount of time in the Covid Hub, from where he caught Covid.

Maddyone
Thank you for posting the link. Always happy to learn.

Still very frustrated that we cannot get appointments with our local GPS though. Still getting the answer, ring back in two weeks and see if there are any appointments then.

Article in The Times today explaining why GP pay is not working for the patients.
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/generous-gp-pay-isnt-working-for-patients-lg2np2bps