The redistribution of funding to general practice, to the tune of £0.5bn, could see some GPs worse off as the Government strives to equalise pay across primary care.

The reforms, which hinge on the redistribution of £118m in minimum practice income guarantee (MPIG) top-ups to core funding for general medical service (GMS) practices and the potential redeployment of £325m in funding currently paid to personal medical services (PMS) practices, form the most wide-ranging overhaul of general practice funding arrangements in a decade.

Many GPs are already unhappy about the arbitrary nature of MPIG top-ups and others have questioned the justification for higher average funding received by practices on locally negotiated PMS contracts.

On the one hand, many GPs are in agreement that NHS England’s plan to arrive at a situation where all practices, whether GMS, PMS or APMS, receive the same core funding for providing core service, but on the other, they are dismayed at the scale and timing of the reforms.

Others maintain that, although many GP practices will benefit financially from the changes, it will only be at the expense of others, some of which could be forced out of business altogether.

The General Practitioners’ Committee (GPC) had always argued for MPIG to be phased out only on a ‘rising tide’ basis, which would have meant all practices receiving increases in funding until all were lifted off reliance on the top-ups.

However, the settlement imposed last year by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt meant that MPIG would be phased out over seven years by redistributing correction factor payments between practices.

This will mean that almost one in four GP practices in England will lose out to some degree from the removal of MPIG and the 98 worst-hit practices face average losses of £150,000 each.