Primary Health Care: Recruitment

(asked on 5th February 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when they intend to complete the recruitment of the additional 20,000 health professionals to support general practitioners, as part of the NHS Long Term Plan.


This question was answered on 14th February 2019

The new general practitioner (GP) contract framework, published on 31 January 2019, set out plans for an Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme in Primary Care Networks. This will provide guaranteed funding for up to an estimated 20,000 additional staff by 2023/24. The funding available will be phased and will meet a recurrent 70% of costs for additional clinical pharmacists, physician associates, first contact physiotherapists and first contact community paramedics; and 100% of the costs of additional social prescribing link workers.

The scheme will be extended gradually, reflecting available supply and funding. Funding from July 2019 will be available for clinical pharmacists and social prescribers only, in 2020 physician associates and first contact physiotherapists will be added and in 2021 first contact community paramedics will be further added to the scheme.

This builds on the extra 3,700 non-GP clinical staff already working in general practice, compared to 2015 and will mean bigger teams of staff, providing a wider range of care options for patients and freeing up more time for GPs to focus on those with more complex needs.

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