Service Reconfiguration

‘GPs should become NHS employees’

A leading GP and academic has called for the profession to relinquish independent contractor status and for them to become NHS employees.

Professor Azeem Majeed, head of the Department of Primary Care & Public Health at Imperial College London, and a part-time GP in London, says GPs should become NHS employees like hospital doctors. 

In an editorial published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Prof Majeed writes: “Under the current capitation-based funding method, GPs face unrestricted demands for their services and on their time while having to operate on a fixed budget.” 

When GPs become unable to cope with their growing workload, he says, pressure will just increase on other parts of the NHS, such as A&E, as has already begun to be seen. 

Prof Majeed suggests that workload should be linked more closely to funding in primary care. 

Employing GPs on national NHS terms of service would help overcome the divide between self-employed GP principals and salaried GPs, he adds, while also considering the incorporation of tariff-based methods of funding in place of or in addition to capitation payments or the establishment of ‘super-partnerships’ of practices. 

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