GPs paid £90 an hour to work weekend shifts

FAMILY doctors are being paid rates equivalent to £176,000 a year to work evenings and weekends, under the Government’s flagship scheme.

Newly trained GPs are being offered shifts at £90 an hour, as part of efforts to persuade doctors to offer care to patients outside office hours.

The sums can be paid on top of a doctor’s regular earnings, which on average amount to £100,000 a year.

But many of those taking the lucrative sessions are young GPs who have come straight out of training, health officials have said.

Pilot schemes have been paid £150m to improve access to care at evenings and weekends, after a manifesto pledge by David Cameron in March this year to introduce seven-day access for patients.

The NHS Central Manchester clinical commissioning group ( CCG) said it is now paying doctors £180 for each two-hour session, as part of plans being rolled out across the city.

Dr Ivan Benett, clinical director at NHS Central Manchester CCG, told a recent meeting of health managers: “We pay about £180 per session, two hours.”

He said the CCG found it “easier to recruit GPs coming out of training” because it has “relatively, more training practices than other parts of the country”.

The scheme was among those hailed by ministers as “leading the way” in improving access for patients.

Health officials in Manchester say ac- cident and emergency attendances have fallen by 3 per cent since GPs began offering routine appointments at evenings and weekends.

Dr Peter Graves, chief executive of Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire local medical committee, questioned whether the money was a wise investment, calculating that the hourly rates equated to an annual salary of £176,000.

“The medical cost of this is £1,080 per day per doctor alone without the nursing and management back-up, et cetera. This is a very expensive service compared to… the average full-time GP,” Dr Graves said.

Dr Benett told magazine: “The payments are for extended hours, not for normal in-hours practice and so it doesn’t really relate to those sorts of sums. It is reasonable to pay extra for working unsocial hours. Actually, many [GP] partners receive that sort of profit share anyway.”

Before the general election the Prime Minister promised to make a “sevenday NHS” a key priority. The Conservatives pledged to roll out seven-day GP access to all patients across England by 2020, and the Prime Minister’s Challenge Fund allocated £100 million to a second wave of seven-day GP pilots.

The Government said this was partly to allow patients to see their GP outside working hours, but it would also reduce pressures on A&E.

However, one seven-day GP access pilot scheme was cancelled earlier this year after NHS Canterbury and Coastal CCG found that its scheme, which saw GPs opening from 9am to 1pm on Saturdays and Sundays, failed to help local A&Es meet their four-hour target.

‘It is reasonable to pay extra for unsocial hours. Many [GPs] receive that sort of profit share anyway’