Funding to hire GPs via the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) ‘will continue beyond March’ next year, the health secretary has confirmed.
Speaking at the RCGP conference last week, Wes Streeting was asked to give newly qualified GPs ‘reassurance’ about ‘secure employment’.
He told audience members that the extra £82m released to hire 1,000 recently qualified GPs via the ARRS will continue into the next financial year, in order to provide ‘certainty and stability’.
The expansion of the ARRS, announced on the eve of GP collective action over the summer, was introduced by Mr Streeting as an ‘emergency measure’ to tackle GP unemployment.
However, full details of the scheme were not shared until last month when the updated PCN DES revealed that only GPs who qualified in the last two years will be eligible.
Last week, the RCGP wrote to NHS England calling for a ‘public commitment’ to ‘identify funding for future years’ and also for the money to ‘become part of the core contract’.
Despite the emphasis on this being an ‘emergency measure’, Mr Streeting has now committed to further funding beyond 2024/25 – but stopped short of confirming that this will be core contract funding.
In a question to the health secretary about the future of the scheme, RCGP chair Professor Kamila Hawthorne highlighted that many GPs are ‘pretty worried that they may have to uproot their lives for a job that may not exist beyond March’.
Mr Streeting said in response: ‘So two things – firstly the funding will continue beyond March. And I think that’s the kind of certainty and stability that people need now both in terms of employing people but also taking up jobs.
‘And the second thing, which also kind of relates to the wider challenge that underpins the threat of collective action – we’re really committed to walking the talk on the left, and growing the proportion of the NHS budget that goes into primary care generally, general practice specifically.’
Although the health secretary hinted that general practice may see funding increases, he warned that this would not be immediate.
He said: ‘I can’t turn around 14 years of underinvestment in a single Budget or even a single Spending Review. But we can start to move in the right direction and try and make things work as well as we can as we make improvements. But it’s a marathon, not a sprint.’
Mr Streeting also announced that the Government is launching ‘a red tape challenge’ to cut down on bureaucracy, in a bid to ‘free up GPs’ time to spend with patients’.
The challenge will be led by NHS England’s director of primary care Claire Fuller and Stella Vig, medical director for secondary care, and report back to the health secretary and NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard in the New Year.
GPs estimate they spend 10-20% of their time on admin, as well as tasks generated by issues with primary and secondary care communication.
The pair will ask GPs, hospitals, and integrated care boards (ICBs) ‘what works well and what needs to change’ before the feedback is considered by a review group made up of doctors in primary and secondary care.
Every ICB and trust will be held to account on progress made in four key areas: onward referrals; complete care; call and recall; and clear points of contact.
The health secretary has also said he will ‘revisit’ the NHS long-term workforce plan in order to shift more focus onto GPs and primary care, following Darzi’s review that found that spending in primary care has a ‘superior return on investment when compared with acute hospital services’.
‘I think the Darzi diagnosis necessarily leads us to a different prescription on the long-term workforce plan,’ Mr Streeting said.
Meanwhile, Mr Streeting asked GPs to ‘stand down’ collective action, and work with the Government to fix the problems in general practice.
He said that collective action means ‘collective failure’ and that patient care will suffer, adding: ‘I wanted to send a message that I understand how bad things are and that I’m determined to fix them, but I can’t do this alone. We can only do this together.
‘So I’m asking GPs to stand down collective action and instead work with this new government that is serious about working with you.’
This article was based on reports first published in our sister title Pulse
