A recent survey has found that almost half of GPs believe that the GP contract needs complete renegotiation, as it is out of date amid declining income and a growing recruitment crisis.

Although this year’s negotiations for the 2014/15 GP contract saw the monthly global sum payment (per patient) rise to £73.56 and a reduction to the Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF) of nearly 40 per cent, the survey, conducted by Pulse magazine, found that many GPs want the QOF to be scrapped and practices to be given greater control over out-of-hours services. This was mainly because most respondents didn’t feel that the negotiations had gone far enough to reduce bureaucracy and ‘box ticking’.

Considering how much core GP services have changed since 2004, when the contracts were introduced, GPs also said that they felt that renegotiation and re-pricing would help to prevent surgeries from failing.

Meanwhile, a report published last year suggested that NHS England should introduce a brand new contract ‘in parallel’ to the General Medical Services (GMS) contract in a bid to ‘incentivise’ GPs to form networks or larger groups.

These larger groups could provide services to improve important areas such as mental health, elderly care and social care, the report suggested and, at the time, NHS England said that the report would be helpful in forming its longer-term strategy for the NHS under the Call to Action scheme.

A spokesman for the NHS Alliance said that it is “completely inevitable” that the GP contract will be scrapped within the next 10 years, as it is losing relevance for many GPs, who would prefer simpler contracts.

However, a spokesman for the General Practitioners’ Committee’s (GPC) contracts and regulations subcommittee said that it is the underfunding of the contract that has caused the problems rather than the contract itself.