Lord McColl of Dulwich
Main Page: Lord McColl of Dulwich (Conservative - Life peer)
Baroness Penn (Con)
One aspect of our response is to increase the number of GPs, but there is also an important role for other healthcare professionals working in primary care. Those numbers increased last year—both the number of nurses working in primary care and the number of other workers, such as physiotherapists and social prescribing link workers. A more diverse workforce and a better mix can free up GP time to focus on those with the highest clinical need.
Lord McColl of Dulwich (Con) [V]
My Lords, there are complications in calculating the number of general practitioners, because a large number of them do variable numbers of sessions—some do four, five, six, seven, eight and so on. The size of the general practice workforce is often calculated in terms of whole-time equivalence, but this is unlikely to be accurate because there are GPs who are paid for five or six sessions but do many more. Is this taken into account when calculating these numbers?
Baroness Penn (Con)
The noble Lord is correct that the numbers are calculated at full-time equivalence. There may be more individual GPs working, because one trend we have seen is that with increased workload, people with families to look after, or who are either at the end or the start of their career, are choosing not to work full-time. With the retention programme, we are looking at both freeing up time and workload pressures on those GPs and providing specific support with childcare and costs to those looking to join or return to general practice.