We're meeting the General Medical Council next Friday 21st July with the GPC Sessional GP Sub-Committee to talk about ways of enabling Freelance GPs to work within the GMC's 'approved working environments'. We've created a new document, and will be grateful for any comments or suggestions from our members that will help us to get our message across.

• NASGP Revalidating Freelance GPs /

As usual, please email your comments to us at info@nasgp.org.uk.

We met them! See our SGPST section for more information on our meeting.

We've received a reply from the GPC to our letter of 15th September 2005.

"...The key proposal which [GMC] council considered and endorsed in principle last month is that, as a condition of being granted an initial licence, all doctors should have to provide information describing their practice. It has always been envisaged that such information would form part of the doctor's revalidation submission. The new element involves linking this requirement to the initial grant of the licence. On the face of it, there is no reason why providing such a description would be any more onerous for one group of doctors over another group.

The decision Council made is subject to a regulatory impact assessment. As part of that process, I agree with you that it would be very useful for there to be a discussion between NASGP and the GMC in order that any specific concerns can be addressed..."

Out italics. We'll set up a meeting with them at the earliest opportunity and let you know the outcome.

The GMC's announcement on the 14th September 2005 that it will change the basis on which a doctor’s license to practise is approved in order to include the requirement to provide information which will support a more risk-based approach to regulation:

"This approach is based on the principle that doctors who may be more at risk should be subject to a higher degree of scrutiny by the GMC compared with others, to whom a lighter touch will apply. In the first instance, the focus will be on doctors working outside a GMC ‘approved environment’ who do not have an employer at all, or who are employed but their employer does not have systems in place capable of providing assurance to the GMC about their fitness to practise.

The GMC would require all doctors to provide information describing their practice, which may include for example details about the scope of their work, the name of their employers if any and whether they practise within their specialty or outside it. An initial information gathering exercise would require all the UK’s practising doctors (around 120,000) to provide these details as a condition of being given a licence to practice.

Where doctors are not working within an approved environment patient and colleague questionnaires will be used to flag any concerns about fitness to practise.

The GMC say that changing the way they manage the licensing of doctors by gathering information about their practice will be a huge step forward in terms of enabling the GMC to analyse the activities of the medical workforce accurately."

See our letter to the GMC