The General Practitioners’ Committee (GPC) has called on NHS England to review its payments for the new national pharmacy flu immunisation scheme, as under the current system, pharmacists could end up being paid more than GPs to administer the flu jab.

The scheme will allow pharmacists in England to administer doses of the flue vaccine to those in the clinical risk groups at £7.64 each, which is what GPs will receive, but pharmacies will receive an additional fee of £1.50 per vaccination for training and disposal costs. GPs are paid a dispensing fee of around £2 per prescription on top of the £7.64 but claim this could still leave them out of pocket because of the administration involved, such as calling and recalling patients.

The GPC has described this as iniquitous, arguing that practices should be reimbursed for the cost of inviting patients in by letter and for administrative costs incurred in updating medical records for patients vaccinated elsewhere.

The Committee will now analyse the schemes and press for payments for GPs to be brought into line with those for pharmacy, if there were inequities in the overall workload, responsibility and remuneration.

As a spokesman for the Committee pointed out, GPs may incur considerable expense in chasing up patients they believe are ‘non-responders’, only to find that they have already been immunised by someone else.

The GPC’s concerns are echoed by the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP), which believes practices left facing financial losses because they are unable to uses doses of the vaccine this year may be less willing to offer the injection from 2016.

A spokesman for the RCGP said that once NHS England starts dispensing services traditionally carried out by GPs, they must expect weakening of general practice, which is trying hard to maintain services to patients.