Costs Soar As Doctors Spend Time Setting Up Reforms

NHS records reveal that senior GPs are spending less than one day a week seeing patients due to being too busy setting up new organisations as part of the governments reforms.

Family doctors are giving up four days each week to setting up clinical commisioning groups (CCGs), the groups of family doctors that will become key NHS bodies from April 2013.

It costs the NHS £123,900 a year to replace GPs with a locum. In one area alone 15 doctors are spending two day a week away from surgery at a cost of almost £1m a year.

Doctor’s leaders say GPs skills are being wasted and vital NHS funds are being wasted Andrew Lansley’s radical restructuring.

"It cannot make sense for experienced doctors to stop providing clinical expertise when the NHS is under such pressure. It's also incredibly bad timing as the NHS shouldn't be wasting precious resources on reorganising itself yet again," said Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the British Medical Association's GPs committee.

False Economy, a TUC-backed research group, made a freedom of information request to the NHS primary care trusts (PCTs) which showed how much time GPs are spending preparing the new set-up rather than treating patients; and the cost to the NHS of their being redirected into managerial tasks.

CCGs will take over management of £60bn NHS funds, replacing PCTs from April 2013.

Labour has warned that the disclosure of costs involved in setting up the CCGs underline the danger that patients could lose out as doctors will spend a significant portion of their time running the new groups and away from surgery’s.

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said: "These plans are flawed on every level and represent a poor use of scarce NHS resources. It makes no sense to take GPs away from frontline patient care and pay [for] them twice in the process."