Family doctor paid £700,000 in a year

THE country’s top- earning GP was paid at least £700,000 in one year, it was claimed last night

The family doctor earned £500,000 more than the chief executive of NHS England, according to a freedom of information request.

Although the average GP takes home around £90,000, doctors can earn more by linking up a number of surgeries and managing tens of thousands of patients.

Figures obtained by the Tax Payers’ Alliance revealed that at least 200 ‘Super GPs’ earned more than £200,000 annually in 2015/16 while working for the NHS. Four were on salaries of between £400,000 and £450,000 and 11 were paid between £300,000 and £350,000 a year, according to a report in the Times.

Family doctors have to provide details of their salaries to their primary care trust every year so health chiefs can calculate how much to pay into their pension pots.

Many GPs earn just £56,000, while partners can earn up to double the basic pay because they are acting as small business owners.

In 2011 the Daily Mail revealed that the top- earning GP in the country was an annual salary of more than £750,000.

The latest astonishing pay packet represents pre-tax income after all outgoings – including the salaries of locums, nurses and receptionists – have been taken into account. The unidentified GP from Kent is believed to be reaping the benefits of a contract that allows doctors to run several surgeries that rake in NHS cash for providing extra treatment.

The contract lets doctors top up their pay by meeting targets for treating a range of conditions as well as allowing them to opt out of working evenings and weekends.

This could include minor surgery to remove cysts or ingrowing toenails, treatment for drug addicts or alcoholics or screening for cervical cancer.

A second doctor in Birmingham was found to be earning an annual sum of £665,000, while another in Essex was paid £412,400.

Dr Vijayakar Abrol, a GP in Birmingham, said of the salary revelations in 2011: ‘These Super GPs are more like businessmen. They employ slaves to run their practices – practice nurses and half a dozen locum doctors. But if you look at all the indicators, they show that the care they are providing is not better, it is worse.

‘The smaller practices are better and patients see a familiar GP, not a locum.’