With increased staffing gaps and locums charging up to £350 per session*, could your practice afford a locum if you needed one?
Your practice is one down, and really being stretched to provide the level of patient care that’s needed. In addition, you’re having a hard time attracting staff due to the shortage of GPs and nurses. In the meantime, can you afford to arrange the locum cover you need?
Locum costs to GP surgeries can be a significant cost. Increased demand and higher locum salaries have seen some surgeries paying out over a hundred thousand pounds a year in locum costs.
As in many parts of the country, there’s a shortage of GPs and nurses in the Portsmouth area, and it’s costing GP surgeries dearly. As reported in June this year**, Waterside Medical Centre in Mumby Road, Gosport, spent £119,228 on locums last year.Up until about three years ago, Derby Road Group Practice was spending between £60,000 to £80,000 a year on locums, and Forton Medical Centre, Gosport has spent £22,780 on locums in the first six months of 2014 alone.
Ironically, while locum salaries are rising ahead of salaried GPs, actually securing a locum is becoming harder. First Practice Management’s 2013 GP practice staff salary survey showed that salaried GPs now earn £44.17 per hour while locum GPs earn significantly more, at an average of £69.72 per hour.
Meanwhile, Dr Richard Fieldhouse, chief executive of the National Association of Sessional GPs confirmed in Pulse*** in December last year that locums are not able to satisfy demand, suggesting that locums are turning away 50% of all work given to them.
Dr Fieldhouse commented that increased locum costs and lack of availability were in part due to the change in GP working patterns over the past 30 years. He added that the GP role has changed enormously and so have the pressures. He says that in the past a GP would settle into one practice and stay there for years, but that now GPs enjoy moving around, working in different practices.
If your surgery had trouble attracting the right staff, would you have the resources to cover rising locum fees for an extended period? Fortunately it’s straight forward to plan ahead with Practice Cover’s locum insurance products.
A tax deductible premium of as little as £1,300 a year with Practice Cover will pay out £2,500 a week (following a 4 deferment period) for up to 52 weeks. You can make sure you have the right level of cover to keep your practice up and running in the middle of a recruitment crisis.
At Practice Cover we don’t insist that you spend your payout on a locum either, so you’re free to do whatever you need to keep your practice running smoothly.
The opinions presented in this blog are solely those of the author on behalf of Practice Cover Limited and they do not constitute individual advice.
*GPonline/Medeconomics locum rates 2011/12
** Portsmouth News http://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/health/local-health/gp-practices-spend-thousands-on-locums-to-fill-vacancies-1-6124312
*** http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/your-practice/practice-topics/pay/average-salaried-gp-rate-drops-by-10-per-hour/20005334.article#.U_NUXrxdUVg
