£1,080 a day pay packet to lure GPs for weekend shifts

NEWLY-qualified GPs are being paid to work weekends at the rate equivalent to £1,080 a day.

The deal is equal to £176,000 a year – three times the annual salaries doctors would typically expect.

The lucrative rate is being offered as part of a government scheme to offer more out- ofhours appointments.

Managers say that without such high sums they would struggle to recruit family doctors to work at ‘unsocial’ times.

But campaigners have called it a ‘bribe’ and even senior GPs say the payments are excessive – particularly when they are being paid to such young, inexperienced doctors.

The rates are being handed out in Manchester, one of the areas trialling David Cameron’s scheme to give surgeries extra cash to stay open out-of-hours.

Under the £150million project, GP practices form groups of 20 or 30 and designate one or two as ‘hubs’ to offer evening and weekend appointments.

Ministers hope it will ease the pressure on surgeries and A&E units and has already been such a success in central Manchester that it is being broadened out across the suburbs.

But yesterday it emerged that doctors are being offered rates of £90 an hour to work at ‘unsociable’ times – the equivalent of £1,080 for a 12-hour shift.

Dr Ivan Benett, chairman of Central Manchester Clinical Commissioning Group – the NHS body overseeing the scheme – said it was entirely ‘reasonable’. The group said the increased pay was only available for twohour shifts between 6pm and 8pm on weekdays, and for two to three hour shifts on Saturdays.

Such work tended to be taken by newly-qualified GPs because there were many at nearby surgeries, said Dr Benett.

But Roger Goss, of campaign group Patient Concern, said: ‘If you have to bribe people to get them to work Saturdays and Sundays in a service that is obviously 24/7, you wonder about their motivation.’

Dr Peter Graves, chief executive of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Local Medical Committee, a regional body of GPs, added: ‘This is a very expensive service compared to the average full-time GPs.’ GPs were able to opt out of evening and weekend work a decade ago while benefiting from a pay deal that saw salaries top £100,000.

The £90 hourly rate – which was uncovered by Pulse magazine – is 50 per cent higher than the £60 to £70 typically paid to locum or agency GPs. It is equivalent to an annual salary of £176,000 – more than three times the £50,000 or £60,000 a newly-qualified doctor would expect to earn.

Introduced in 2013, the PM’s out- of-hours scheme is said to have helped A&E attendances drop by 8 per cent in some areas. But in areas like North Yorkshire and Cornwall bosses cut the number of weekend and evening appointments because patients weren’t showing up. Officials said it is because these areas had many elderly patients who didn’t want consultations on a Saturday or Sunday. The push towards a seven-day GP service has been called a ‘surreal obsession’ by senior doctors.

Both the British Medical Association and the Royal College of GPs have said there are not enough doctors to staff practices for the extra hours.

Dr Richard Vautrey, of the BMA, said: ‘There is a big question mark over whether the NHS should be spending scarce resources on this politicallydriven experiment.’ The Department of Health said the Manchester scheme was independent but had inspired the PM’s project.