Independent Review of the Physician and Anaesthesia Associate Professions

Wednesday 20th November 2024 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting)]

The Government have commissioned Professor Gillian Leng CBE to lead an independent review into the physician and anaesthesia associate professions. This will consider how they are currently used and how they can be integrated safely into health teams to deliver the best possible care.

The review will consider the safety, cost-effectiveness and efficiency of roles, alongside the lessons that can be learned from how they have been deployed in the NHS. The conclusions of the review will inform future reforms, which will be vital to the delivery of the 10-year health plan. This review marks an important step: to reset the discussion by stepping back and taking stock of the evidence.

The review will report in spring 2025 and will gather the available evidence and data on the physician associate (PA) and anaesthesia associate (AA) professions from the UK and globally, engaging with these professionals, patients, the public, doctors and other professions, employers, and researchers. It will review the safety of the roles, patient experience, the contribution the roles can make to more productive use of professional time in multidisciplinary teams, and whether these roles deliver good quality, efficient and safe patient care in a range of settings.

PAs and AAs support doctors to manage patients, increasing the capacity of health care services and freeing up doctors to focus on specialist cases. The roles should always work under the supervision of a doctor, but concerns have been raised by the medical professional about blurred lines of responsibility and whether, in some cases, PAs and AAs are being used to replace doctors. The public has every right to be confident they are seeing the most appropriate healthcare professional.

Regulation of PAs and AAs by the General Medical Council will begin in December 2024 and will help to ensure all PAs and AAs meet the high standards we expect of every healthcare professional. However, we do not have a comprehensive view of how these roles are being deployed, or how effectively, and the review will address this gap. The conclusion will provide clarity to patients and healthcare professionals and inform our 10-year health plan.

Terms of reference for the review will be published on www.gov.uk in due course. Following completion of the review, we will publish our findings and update the House on next steps.

[HCWS236]