Time For Transparency - NHS Alliance

Main Category: Primary Care / General Practice
Article Date: 18 Aug 2009 - 0:00 PDT

email to a friend   printer friendly   opinions  

After the Daily Mail's claims that GPs are earning 'jaw dropping' amounts of money and the defensive instance taken by both the Department of Health and the British Medical Association, perhaps it is time to open an informed debate about whether practices and GPs should put their accounts in the public domain.

In a time when banks and MPS are coming under scrutiny for misusing taxpayers' money, it is crucial that the NHS and those involved in spending public money work out ways to increase accountability and transparency, therefore avoiding the spread of misleading information, such as the article published by the Daily Mail today.

At the moment, Primary Care Trusts have access to practices' gross income which does not reflect GPs' 'take home' pay, as it doesn't take into consideration expenditure, such as staff salaries, rent and other expenses.

The Daily Mail had access to information from 22 out of 155 PCTs, which can hardly be considered a representative sample. And the fact remains that the average GP salary is around £100,000 a year, almost one fourth of the £380,000 published by the newspaper, with many GPs earning even less than that.

Many also have to have conveniently forgotten that general practices are increasingly dealing with more complex cases which require more funds and resources.

Michael Sobanja, chief executive, NHS Alliance, said: "Sadly, this is one of these situations where people claim to know the cost of everything as opposed to their value. And, in this case, even the cost seems to be wrong. We need a debate about how open general practices need to be about their income and expenditure. Ultimately, this is not only about how much a GP earns, but also the service the same GP is providing."

Source
NHS Alliance

• Additional
• References
• Citations