Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has asked the doctors’ and dentists’ pay review body (DDRB) to consider the salaried GP model in its next report, specifically asking for its observation on the factors affecting their ‘recruitment, retention and motivation’.

In an open letter published earlier this month, Mr Hunt said he was confirming the Government’s approach for 2017/18 and would like to understand the trend, picked up in the DDRB’s last report, of the expansion of the salaried model in general practice.

The Health Secretary told the DDRB that the Department of Health (DH) would provide it with better measures to assess recruitment and retention issues and to consider whether there was a case for targeting pay awards.

Meanwhile, in separate news, a new survey has found that more than half of GP practices could soon employ a wide range of extra, non-GP clinical staff, such as pharmacists.

A poll conducted by GP Online found that 31 per cent of GPs already employ a pharmacists and 16 per cent are considering doing do, as they believe that increasing the skill mix in their practices could help to address the current GP shortage.

Almost half of respondents said their practice employed a nurse practitioner and more than a quarter said they employed other non-GP staff, such as mental health workers, optometrists, midwives and counsellors, who helped with clinical workload.

NHS England has already increased its investment in the scheme to recruit clinical pharmacists to work in GP practices from £15m to more than £30m and noted in the GP Forward View that they are ‘one of the most underutilised professional resources in the system’, whose considerable skills should be brought more fully into primary care.