Crisis over GP pay?

Tuesday 14 January 2014

Jersey faces a 'looming recruitment crisis' over a growing pay gap with the UK, according to the GP's professional body.

Dr Nigel Minihane, who chairs the Primary Care Body, says that his colleagues have themselves called for a UK-style regulation system to ensure that Jersey remained an attractive place for trained and qualified GPs to come to work. He said that GPs here had been working to a revalidation system for the last five years.

And he said that while he welcomed the Health department’s announcement that they planned to consult on the new regulation system that would ensure GPs could come to and from Jersey from the UK without losing professional accreditation, he remained concerned that a pay gap could see the Island become an unattractive prospect to GPs.  

He said: ‘Recruitment is getting more difficult.

‘We used to have a differential in favour of us financially.

‘I know that the widespread belief is that Jersey GPs earn a fortune and that they are expensive. They are expensive, and the reason for that – in my view – is that Social Security do not subsidise to the degree that they should.

‘In fact, our earnings when you take into account pensions, are less than UK counterparts.

‘I think there is a looming recruitment crisis.’

The new system proposed in the Health department’s six-week consultation would create a Performers List for GPs in order to strengthen local governance, enabling poor performance in individual doctors to be monitored and providing assurance regarding the quality and safety of GPs in Jersey. It would ensure that only GPs registered with the UK General Medical Council (GMC) could practice here.