There are three vacancies for NASGP council members, commencing in October 2008 for 3 years. Council members are asked to attend up to 2 midweek meetings in London per year, with travel expenses and honoraria. Other business is generally performed via email. Any Sessional GP member of the NASGP may propose another Sessional GP member for election to one of these 3 seats. A web-based ballot will take place in August if the number of nominations exceeds the number of seats. The results will be declared in the October-November edition of The Sessional GP. Nomination forms and further details are available here. The closing date for applications for nomination is July 25th 2008.

Locum A and B forms now downloadable from the NASGP website [more...]
 

Make sure your practice managers give you a unique username and password - especially if you're Freelance - when using their clinical systems [more...]
 

Big Changes are happening to the administration of the NHS Pension Scheme across the UK [more...]
 

Updated the IT section to include several crib sheets specifically for freelance GPs, including EMIS, Torex and Vision [more...]

I attended the RCGP’s Revalidation Stakeholder Group meeting and just wanted to report back a few points from the meeting.

• Still looking like revalidation will be every 5 years.
• Annual appraisal will still, somehow, be part of revalidation.
• The college is looking at a system of ‘credits’ – at least 50 per year, with a total of 250 credits needed for revalidation.
• The college is looking at a ‘menu’ of areas for individual assessment such as referral information, complaints, significant events, case discussions, videoing and some tried-and-tested types of multi-source feedback but still much work needed.
• PACT data and analysis of QOF data will be used too, but obviously not yet much use to freelance GPs!
• Medical record review may be an option, but practices will need to ensure locums have proper usernames and passwords.
• Piloting – all this needs to be tested on GPs (guinea-pigs) and we’ve already offered to provide volunteers from our membership who may be interested in piloting.

The next meeting of the group is in May and we’ll let you know more after that meeting.

Richard Fieldhouse, NASGP CEO
 

The National Audit Office has today issued its report on GP pay and, tucked away in the report, is the startling fact that the average pay of a salaried GP is £46,905, having only risen by 3 per cent since the new contract was introduced, compared to 58% (from £72,011 in 2002-03 to £113,614 in 2005-06) for GP Principals. This figure does not, however, represent the average full time salary. The results of a workload survey published in July 2007 by the Information Centre for Health and Social Care indicated that the average salaried GP works 23.8 hours per week. This suggests that a full time salaried GP receives around £74,000 per annum.

For the full report see the NAO website. See also Pulse for information about the Salaried GP survey.

Extending GP Hours

Often we are faced these days both as professionals and in our private lives with conflicting interests. Those that affect our purse and those those affect our conscience and the decision is not always simple. We are counselled as professional doctors to act with integrity and the buzz word in appraisals is probity which is, for many, an ill-defined and misunderstood term. I was pondering this when the recent issue of extended GP hours came up with the impasse between what government wants, and what the doctors believe is reasonable. The ensuing BMA poll, which I hope most of you will have received and completed by now, is offering GP’s Hobson’s choice. How does this affect us though as Sessional GP’s? We don’t have fixed surgeries or staff to manage. We will not have to divert funds and time from existing practise. Will it indeed affect us at all? Should we in fact complete the poll?

Well, the outcome may provide locums opportunities to provide services outside of core hours with the financial implications of that service provision depending how you value your “free time”. It may of course result in already hard-pressed partners and salaried GP’s providing the service themselves. Once again this will benefit the salaried GP financially. So much for the “dollars and cents” (no the Americans haven’t taken over our currency yet!) but what about the moral issue of the failure for this to be adequately negotiated with further erosion of the autonomy of British General Practice and respect for General Practitioners – who are, by the way, independent contractors to the NHS.

Our concerns at NASGP are primarily to address ourselves to the interests of Sessional General Practitioners (i.e. Freelance GPs and Salaried GPs) and, if the current moves by government were to result in gain for our members then surely, we should be welcoming the opportunity for further employment. There are, however, fundamental issues at stake here and this brings me full circle to my opening line on conflicting interests. Whilst completing the poll may mean little to your personal concerns as Sessional GP’s, the fact that a poll has become necessary emphasises the gravity with which the BMA view this issue, not in isolation but as part of a greater erosion of, as I perceive it, respect for the profession’s ability to manage medical practice in the interest of their patients.

I am not suggesting here which way you should vote on this. I am simply raising the point that we need to be aware and awake to the threat to our colleagues, and therefore ultimately to us who are employed or contracted by them because this will not be the end of the story!

This poll will affect you all as much as it will our Non Sessional Colleagues.


Michael Uprichard
NASGP Chairman
chairman@nasgp.org.uk