Practices are considering making salaried GPs work as locums to eliminate the cost of their national insurance, a leading specialist accountant has told GP Online.
Katie Collin, a partner at specialist medical accountancy Ramsay Brown, told GPonline: “The threat of six months of uncertainty is pushing some GPs to hold back on awarding pay rises, reduce services, and axe plans to recruit despite capacity issues.
“At Ramsay Brown, we’re even seeing some begin to opt out of the pension scheme in an attempt to claw back money, and some are considering replacing permanent staff with ad-hoc locums to avoid NI costs altogether.”
Accountants at AISMA warned last month that the rise in employers’ national insurance contributions would increase costs to practices from next April. For example this means an employee earning £30,000 a year will cost the practice an additional £866.
Dr Richard Fieldhouse, NASGP chair, said: “Practices are facing another hard choice, and the clock is ticking. But let’s not make any hasty decisions that would have a significant impact on salaried GPs’ livelihoods and welfare, decisions we could later regret; there is already a solid plan in play.
“Collective action – GPs sticking to their contractual obligations – is starting to have an effect, but any action that devalues substantive GPs weakens the profession’s negotiating position.
“Until the government has seen sense, we currently have a huge untapped resource of high-quality, ready-to-work self-employed GPs who pay their own national insurance, ready-and-waiting to be booked direct through platforms like LocumDeck. Once the national insurance issue has been resolved, we hope there will be even more salaried roles and funding for locums to meet the needs of our patients.”