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.

Fax?!

To be fair both of things you reference are pretty easy to arrange at weekends. Doctors do need to offer more flexibility and move with the times.

Can businesses reduce their liability via pensions?

You’re still using faxes? Do the paperwork at the end of the session, it’s not rocket science.

@Newposter180 I work for a car dealership

It says it all doesn't it really as to why these "businesses" are screwed.

It really does. A time and motion expert would have an absolute field day with it.

This is really not true. I think some people are going to get a huge shock.

GP practices are a different beast & do need a huge overhaul, not just in the tech they you use.

I do see @RosesAndHellebores point re doctor availability, everyone I know struggles with getting a doctors appointment & they just don’t go. I never go until I’m actually quite ill & have then been sent to a hospital. As a pp said DHs law firm has an on-site doctor, maybe more companies will do that?

Still in the dark ages. I've run call centres in past lives - it amazes me the doctors still type in the numbers. Predictive dialing could revolutionise. The contact rates for outbound call must be pretty poor.

This is really not true. I think some people are going to get a huge shock.

Why is it not true @rainingsnoring? Yes some people will lose their jobs, some companies will fold, some would have folded without any change to NI, but other jobs & companies will thrive. That’s business.

Alternative view - some tories are going to have a disappointment that it doesn't all fall to shit like it did with their mini-budget.

My comment was obviously simply to show up the foolishness of the pp’s comment. I must remember that some people are painfully literal.

It is interesting, though, that a GP who’s explained at length the difficulties for her practice attracts lots of ‘fat cat doctor’ comments. The usual response to doctors’ complaints on here is to support them to the hilt. It seems that public sector employees are inevitably good; but people running businesses - even GPs - are to be distrusted.

BurnoutGP
Our options are too shut shop/hand back our contract. I'm not a fucking idiot. I've been a partner for over 20 years.
I can't magic money out of the money tree.
That was kind of my point. But the mansplaining is appreciated thank you.
I'll look at our options. For the hundredth time this month.

—- hope you read the original thread, I offered my genuine, kind advice. I don’t deserve to be replied to like that. But I suppose them being a dr it’s ok. We can just blame it down to stress.

having read the entire thread, this dr doesn’t want to listen to anyone’s advice, what’s the point in this forum? And quite frankly, they have replied rudely on several occasions, without the need to.

just to clarify, I’m a Nurse, I deeply care about people’s situations, but why should I care about a Drs situation when my advice is so rudely replied to, and I’m not the only one who had the same advice.

but if you care so much about this poor dr, why don’t you give him the extra money he needs so he can meet wages. Because that’s the issue here, don’t think I saw a post where they were concerned about not being able to treat patients.

The number of people on here that think a minimum wage of £12.21 is too high is frightening. It is almost impossible to live on this

I don't think so. A very high percentage of employment comes from SMEs. They have been under huge pressure for the last few years. We already have rising unemployment and insolvencies. With the business rates and all the other costs, it won't be at all easy for SMEs to make profits. Apart from that, I think we are heading for recession, probably next year.

This is a medical thing, not GP, but I had no choice. NHS said fax, so fax it was.

Also, medical notes should be contemporaneous. Not doing this way puts you at an unacceptable risk of error.

Let's see! I am most definitely not a Tory btw but I think Labour are not much better if at all, sadly. Imo, most people in the UK are facing disappointment!

Presumably you have a health issue when you go to your GP. Having time off for this is enshrined in law.

There is nothing enshrined in law that says your employer has to give you time off to see your GP or for hospital appointments. Employers are not obligated to allow time off and to cover the time needed can ask you to variously take holiday entitlement, make up the time, rearrange in your own time or lose pay. The only exceptions to this are if you have protected characteristics as described in the Equality Act 2010 - and ‘health issues’ have to qualify as a disability, as defined by the Act.

Ah, a post that says nothing other than “I can’t form my own thoughts”

It sounds to me that qualified GPs with bags of experience are spending far too much of their time agonising over how to run their practices as a business.

It is a complete waste of their time and education. It might have been fine when it was a small practice of a couple GPs, a receptionist and a medical secretary when everything was paper based but times have moved on.

Clinical staff running services and budgets is one of the main reasons the NHS is failing IME. My Band 7 friend who was responsible for the budget for her department admitted to me that she didn't even understand the budget spreadsheet let alone be able to follow what was being discussed in the budget meeting. I don't think she even realised what the job actually entailed before she applied for it. Manager above her sounds equally clueless in the numbers department so I am not sure she could even learn from her.

I think you can be a good technical specialist or a good business manager but you can't be both, at least not at the same time.

Well the budget certainly indicates they don’t like private ownership

I have a friend who is a GP receptionist and frankly relies on benefits (which are fortunately good because she is a single mum) to pay rent and live.

The economy has got to be rebalanced. We don't know what will happen to primary care contracts but hopefully they will receive an uplift to reflect this and some changes in the business model to help make things more efficient.

What tax decisions would you have preferred? (Other than Wealth Tax, which is never going to happen)

Practice managers are now almost entirely business managers, their role is manage the money and contracts for the partners. The OP and her partner's may need to look in the direction of their practice manager for why they're struggling or at least for ideas on how to get out of the mess, that's why they employ them.

I don't think people think it's too high in general, it's that those people who were doing jobs that require experience and qualifications are even closer to NMW now. If companies put everyone's pay up by the same amount it would be fine but you can guarantee that they won't.