NHS to take on 1,000 ‘cheap’ GPs from Europe
HUNDREDS of European GPs are to be brought to the UK to ease a national shortage of family doctors.
Britain’s largest general practice recruitment firm is planning to hire up to 1,000 doctors over the next four years mainly from Romania, Hungary, Portugal and Spain.
They will be loaned out to understaffed surgeries on long- term contracts and will cost far less than UK-trained GPs.
Meanwhile, the NHS is launching a pilot scheme which will bring doctors from Poland, Romania, Spain and Italy to fill practices in Lincolnshire. Up to 25 GPs will arrive within the next six months and if the strategy is successful, neighbouring counties will adopt it.
The NHS is in the grips of a recruitment crisis of family doctors and up to one in eight posts are currently unfilled. Older GPs are retiring early in their 50s and are not being replaced by younger trainees, because the career path is unpopular.
Yet pressures on surgeries are increasing with migration and the ageing population, often making it difficult to get an appointment.
The Government has set a target of recruiting an extra 5,000 GPs by 2020 but this is unlikely to be met.
And last week ministers promised to train more UK-born doctors – but they will not start coming through for another ten years.
Recruiting so many European GPs to plug shortages in the meantime has raised safety concerns.
The General Medical Council is unable to check the basic competency of doctors from the EU as this would impede their ‘freedom of movement’ rights.
And although the watchdog can test general language skills, this does not include vital terminology about symptoms, illnesses and drugs. The managers of both schemes insist the GPs will undergo rigorous training and exams before they start work.
In the first, recruitment firm Primary Care People is planning to set up a ‘bank’ of between 600 and 1,000 European doctors over the next four years. The first wave of 120 will arrive early next year.
All will undergo four to six months of training at centres in London and Liverpool to improve their English, medical skills and knowledge of the NHS. They will then be allocated to places most needing staff including Hull, Blackpool, the Lake District and the Isle of Wight.
The firm will loan doctors to surgeries at a rate of £500 a day, compared with the average £650 per day it costs to hire their UK-trained equivalent.
Tawhid Juneja, managing director of Primary Care People, said: ‘We need qualified GPs right now. It’s great to have an initiative for homegrown doctors but we need immediate relief.’
The NHS pilot scheme is being jointly run by NHS England and the regional body of GPs, Lincolnshire Local Medical Committee.
The 25 European GPs will undergo 12 weeks training at a centre in Poland and be offered extra support on the job when they arrive.
If successful, it will be extended to Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire – and possibly further afield.
Dr Kieran Sharrock, medical director of Lincolnshire LMC, said: ‘NHS England is funding this as a pilot. We will use the learning from this to help other areas recruit in a similar way.’
Problems with the rules on checking doctors from the EU were tragically exposed in 2008 when pensioner David Gray was killed by a German GP, Daniel Ubani, who gave him an overdose of morphine.
His son Rory Gray said incompetent EU GPs could still ‘get through’ in the absence of GMC checks.
‘We need them right now’