Lincolnshire medical director labels rise in National Insurance on GP surgeries a 'moral injury'

Medical director for the Lincolnshire Local Medical Committee, Dr Reid Baker, said the government has decided to include GPs in the National Insurance increase.

Dr Baker, who is also a salaried GP at the Caythorpe and Ancaster Medical Practice, told East Lindsey District Council’s overview committee on Tuesday (July 22) that this had created an additional pressure on services.

He said: “We were considered to be private businesses in the National Insurance increases, yet any other private business can make contracts with whoever they like and increase their charges for the services they provide. General practices cannot do that and therefore we are not private businesses and we are so passionate that we are part of the NHS, the bedrock of the NHS, that it really was a significant moral injury to general practice when that was announced.”

Dr Baker told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “Apart from the Covid spike, we’ve (GP practices) had a sequential decrease in NHS funding in real terms.

“We’re getting more patients and fewer GPs which means you may struggle to get an appointment with your GP. We’ve had a 20 per cent decrease in real terms general practice funding since about 2017-8 which makes it harder to deliver more with less.”

Dr Baker told the committee: “The challenges within practices are that minimum wage, rightly so, has gone up significantly over the last few years by about 49 per cent but the contract for general practices has gone up by about 28 per cent, leaving a 21 per cent gap which practices have had to fund. In Lincolnshire in the last 10 years or so, we’ve gone from 101 to 81 GP practices, some of those directly related to the pressures of finance and workforce.”

The Caythorpe GP went on to say that it is often a ‘challenge’ for GP surgeries to make enough money to keep afloat.

“We’re paid through a global sum to set up the service, employ the staff, run the building, buy all the things you need to buy and deliver the services to patients the best you possibly can. If there’s anything left at the end of that, that’s the profit which becomes GP pay.

“If there is no profit, GP partners have no money, probably hand back that contract and you lose that practice. What happens is the next-door practice has to take on those patients and it becomes more of a challenge.”