The new contract deal for GPs will see practices receiving around 40 per cent less next year but will increase the value of the global sum, create a new emergency admissions DES and oblige GPs to publish their net pay.

Currently, the main source of income, accounting for around half the funding a GP practice receives, is the ‘global sum’, which is a payment based on the estimated workload from the patients registered.

They also receive cash through the Quality and Outcomes Framework, which is at the centre of these latest contract changes. This is effectively a points system, where practices accumulate a score from meeting requirements such as monitoring how many of their patients have a certain condition or ensuring checks such as blood pressure readings are carried out on a regular basis.

Under the new deal, practices will see 341 out of 900 QOF points removed from the framework, which is the equivalent of £54,000 for the average practice, with the majority reinvested in core GP funding.
However, in return, GPs will have to accept ‘named GP’ responsibility for all patients aged 75 years and older, publish their net income from 2015 and commit to police the care their patients receive from out-of-hours providers.

Seniority payments for long-serving GPs and funding for premises make up the rest of a practice’s income and out of this pot a practice has to pay staff costs and other bills as well as the GPs’ salaries.

Those GPs who have responsibilities for practice management earned £103,000 on average across the UK in 2011/12, however, salaried GPs, who do not, could this year earn a maximum of £81,969.