General Practitioners

(asked on 28th February 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate he has made of the number of full time employed (a) qualified GPs and (b) training grade GPs in the general practice workforce in (i) London and (ii) England in each year since 2010.


Answered by
Maria Caulfield Portrait
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
This question was answered on 5th April 2022

The following table shows the number of qualified salaried general practitioners (GPs) employed in the general practice workforce on a full time basis of 37.5 hours a week in England since 2015, headcount.

Number of headcount salaried GPs working 37.5 hours and over per week

September 2015

1,480

September 2016

1,569

September 2017

1,554

September 2018

1,541

September 2019

1,497

September 2020

1,483

September 2021

1,554

Notes:

  1. Data from September 2015 and September 2016 should be treated with caution as the data submission rates from practices were appreciably lower than for subsequent reporting periods. In September 2015, which was the first extract from the new Workforce Minimum Data Set, three of four Health Education England regions submitted data. Consequently, September 2015 figures should be treated with additional caution.
  2. Figures shown do not include regular GP locums or staff working in prisons, army bases, educational establishments, specialist care centres including drug rehabilitation centres, walk-in centres and other alternative settings outside of traditional general practice such as urgent treatment centres and minor injury units.
  3. Though there is no specific data for salaried GPs, other GPs were defined as GPs who worked within partnerships and were formerly known as GMS or PMS Others. These practitioners are generally remunerated by salary.
  4. The FTE figures for GPs from September 2015 onwards are not directly comparable with FTE figures from the National Health Application and Infrastructure Services (NHAIS) and manual collection due to NHAIS having a default value of 1.0 FTE whereas the Primary Care Web Tool (PCWT) has no default value. NHAIS capped individual GP FTE at 1.28 (48 hours); in the PCWT the cap is 2.0 FTE (75 hours). NHAIS has instances of GPs working at multiple practices each with the default value of 1.0. For example, a GP working at five practices would have an FTE of 5.0 from NHAIS which was capped at 1.28 for the publication. NHAIS has instances of GPs recorded against specific practices at which they no longer work but their records have not yet been removed. If these GPs had multiple records, they would have been capped at 1.28 FTE in the publication. NHAIS FTE field is non-mandatory, PCWT FTE is mandatory and the data provider has to complete it in order to pass data quality checks and enable submission of their data. NHAIS FTE field was mainly used for the annual census and was not used for payment purposes

The following table shows the number of GPs employed in the general practice workforce on a full time basis in England in each year between 2010 and 2014, headcount. This data was collected through the general practice census, which recorded the details of GPs in England along with information on their practices, staff, patients and the services they provide. General practice workforce statistics from prior to 2015 are not comparable to the official statistics produced since September 2015, due to differences in data sources and methodologies.

Number of headcount other GPs working 37.5 hours and over per week

September 2010

5,109

September 2011

4,608

September 2012

5,298

September 2013

6,343

September 2014

7,266

As independent contractors to the National Health Service, GP partners are not considered to be employed by their practice. The information requested for GPs in London and those in training grade is not held centrally.

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