Over 6,000 sessions were booked on LocumDeck last month with GPs in England.
NASGP’s data on its locum booking platform also show:
- Practices in England booked an average of 6,000 sessions a month with GPs on LocumDeck in 2024.
- More sessions were booked on LocumDeck last month than in March, April or May.
- Sessions booked went up 19% between August 2022 and August 2024.
GPs have increasingly turned to locum work as pay and conditions for salaried GPs and GP partners deteriorated.
Last week the chair of the BMA’s General Practitioners’ Committee warned that GPs’ collective action shows the strength of feeling about underfunding in the sector.
“We are not in a position to be able to wait for long-term plans next year or consumer spending reviews,” Dr Bramall-Stainer responded.
Dr Richard Fieldhouse, GP and chair of NASGP, which runs LocumDeck, said: “Although the number of sessions booked may have increased, this is in the context of anything up to 5,000 more GP locums in England in January than there were pre-Covid, causing supply to outstrip demand. That number of extra GP locums has dropped significantly to around 3,000 more, but even so, many locums are still struggling for work.
“Across the seven ICBs that have fully adopted LocumDeck as their locum booking platform, the number of sessions booked by practices has actually risen steadily for the last two years. This suggests that when LocumDeck’s unique session-matching model is deployed at scale, it offsets the often cited reason of less funding, or GP locums being replaced by ARRS roles in these areas.
“We’re hearing all too often from busy practice managers that WhatsApp and other jobs-board models led to an overwhelming, unmanageable response from desperate locums, so a model that lets the practice book GP locums direct is a far more practical and sustainable solution to their needs.”