To think this budget will finish us off

[BurnoutGP]

I am a GP Partner of over 20 years. I am now senior partner for the last few years. We have seen year on year below inflation funding increase. With an explosion in demand and massive shift of work from secondary care. We have issues wirh recruitment.
Our partner income is shrinking year on year. We are now always overdrawn and this gets worse every month.
We just cannot soak up the MLW and NI without adequate resource uplift.
I think we will be done. I'm so very tired of the constant battle and the demand and anger while working "part time" 60hr weeks.
We will have to hand back our contract. And we wont be the only one. That will leave one surviving practice in my area.
I'm done.

I care. Many do. I hope your child will never need a GP to realise they have closed down.

It won’t because the NHS is exempt from the NI rise.

My job is now £2 above the NLW, after student loans and pensions I probably take home less than that. I don't get paid overtime, can't do extra hours. I feel like jacking it in and doing something less stressful and just doing overtime to make up the difference.

I know I'm fairly badly paid for what I do but I needed experience to get this job. Why did I waste my time working my way up to this when someone coming in with no experience or the cleaner who comes in does her 8 hour shift and goes home without the stress gets almost the same.

@Killingoffmyflowersonebyone surely if you increased your prices from the 1st of December (giving clients a month’s notice of price increases) that would give you 4 months to build up some reserves by April. NI and wage increases won’t take effect until then and nor will business rates (all of which I assume you pay monthly).

The NI increases are massive. My husband works for an organisation that has had to absorb millions of pounds in costs post covid- energy rates, minimum wage increases etc. the budget may well have been the death for it. If that business goes under there are a few thousand people who will be out of a job and that will absolutely be hitting the pockets of ‘working people’.

I think tax rises needed to happen but I think they’re gone to fast on business at a time when the economy isn’t in a shining state. I’d have actually preferred to have had a personal tax rise as prices will have to go up everywhere to account for the wage increases. Nursery fees for example will have to be going up to deal with the ni and minimum wage uplifts. Shops will need to raise prices etc.

There are also some taxes they could have gone for but don’t- they didn’t reduce isa allowances for examples or do much on inheritance tax other than going for farmers.

It’s happening in the NHS too. Qualified staff are not making much more than unqualified. Its like communism, trying to make everyone get the same wage even when they have massively different skills and responsibilities.

Because this Labour Government is a party of ideology. Business BADDD. Union Goooodd. Public sector GOOOOD.

I work with public sector people. The stories I can tell about how inefficient and ineptitude they are. One person is missing 50% of the time no kidding. And he's so lazy, he got promotion as a reward. He's quite typical sadly for a department managing billions and billions of taxpayers money. It is depressing. And he voted for Labour of course!!!

But 1p came off the price of a pint yesterday. You should now be planning your next vacation in Bora Bora.

I spent yesterday afternoon trying to explain to people how long it takes most pubs that aren’t Wetherspoons to sell a barrel of beer. I’ve owned pubs and given them up as bad jobs. You have my absolute sympathy.

Ok i guess that makes sense as otherwise it would just be moving money around different government pots for no actual benefit. Is it all public sector organisations that won’t pay the increase or just the NHS do you know?

Have pmd you @BurnoutGP

Where does it say ths? Not questioning if you are right just that I read most of the budget guidance yesterday and completely missed that bit, is anyone else exempt?

You say that this is a difficult time because you've had significant capital outlay because of senior partners retiring and taking their cut and this will sort itself out over future years. That bank balance doesn't seem bad in the circumstances. You're a business and businesses go through good and bad times. I know, I ran my own for some years.

In my area my pharmacist is building a consulting room in the pharmacy and next month will start prescribing for people who may need antibiotics and a limited range of medications. I imagine that will lift a pretty large burden from the local GP practice. Is this happening in your area too?

@Killingoffmyflowersonebyone no ooh visit fee? £15 consultation. That’s insanely cheap. My vet charges £30 and £60 OOH which I think is pretty good value. Why can’t he charge more? Is he a small animal vet?

Our pharmacy is in the practice. They're on their knees too. A lot of chemists have closed down, especially the Boots ones in our area.

I think this is one of the problems. Not everyone who is a good doctor is cut out to be a good business owner. If you can't make a doctors practice work maybe go back to being an employee. They are very different skills.

Again, your post is dripping with resentment while at the same time demonstrating no understanding of the situation that GPs have been trying to deal with for many years.
GPs want to provide a high standard of care and do their best to do so but with decades of poor funding, despite providing > 95% of NHS consultations in primary care, secondary care transferring more and more work their way, an ageing population with very complicated needs, a rise in guidelines to digest and follow, a much more demanding public who have been taught to hate GPs through repeated negative media coverage over years, a rise in complaints and litigation, a rise in hoops to jump through, it has become harder and harder. It's simply not the same as being an accountant or a lawyer. It's a real shame that you don't even try to understand the differences.

It won’t because the NHS is exempt from the NI rise.

I heard all public sector was but haven’t read it anywhere?

........and commented that he had to 'stuff their mouths with gold' just to overcome their opposition and get the NHS up and running.

What do you do, out of interest? It seems unusual to have studied to a high level and then be on NMW.

My employer has come in this morning and said he has had enough. Profits have been small enough since covid. He was on the phone to estate agents last night. The profit from selling the building the business is in is far more than any profit he has made for the last 4 years. We do not blame him but that will be 5 people out of work claiming from the state.

This gave me a good laugh this morning
and the previous governments were so expletive deleted wonderful weren’t they?!

But it's not 1.8% is it, it was 10% last year on NMW, it is the doubling of utilities, in hospitality it is the cost of supplies as other companies have their increased overheads to cover, it is also the fact that since lockdown people do not spend as much or go out as much. If it was 1.8% just this year then yes I would agree with you.

It is not just NMW that increases, what about those on £12.21 an hour already, all those need to go up otherwise they are on the same as entry level people, they won't get 6% as no one can afford that but they need something as who wants more responsibility for nothing, and so on.

It absolutely baffles me how people cannot see past the surface. Hospitality is absolutely horrific right now. We are facing the potential that my husband and son could lose their jobs at any time, we are at a stage in our lives where we should be looking forward to enjoying the fact our kids are now at college age whereas we are having to plan around redundancy for the 3rd time so will be skint. Not to mention how ill it has made DH. We are both professional workers, doing 60+ hrs a week, we will never complain about what we earn (above average but not that high for living in the south).

Honestly these threads are so upsetting.

This isn’t a fair assessment as you’re missing the constraints specific to a GP practice

The UK has experienced poor growth and productivity for somethings like 40 years, under both Labour and Conservative governments. A single budget assessed over only 4-5 years won’t give a U-turn in growth or be able to be delivered by ANY party.

This, this, this.

I get you. Sorry to hear your stress.