April 2023 Update

Following the announcement of a GMS contract imposition for 2023/24 Doncaster LMC surveyed colleagues on their willingness to take industrial action.

Dear Colleagues,

The BMA’s GPCE (GP Committee England) voted to reject the Government’s proposed contract changes for 2023/24 on 1st February 2023. Despite further lobbying and discussions throughout last month, no further changes were made. These changes will subsequently come into force on 1st April 2023.

GPCE voted to reject these contract changes because:

• • • it increases the bureaucratic burden on practices
    • they place access targets on practices that, will likely leave at least some in breach of contract
    • there is no support for practices with  inflationary and minimum wage pressures

We know that this workload is leading to burn out of GPs.  As the workload increases and the number of GPs decreases, the capacity for general practice to provide safe care diminishes.

To force Government into meaningful talks, GPCE is preparing to ballot GPs. To be part of a future ballot, GPs must be a BMA member to participate.  We await further information from the BMA about what this might look like.

In the meantime, we need to know your thoughts.

We asked Doncaster GPs

1. Are you a member of the BMA?
2. Are you a GP Partner / Sessional GP
3. Would you consider participating in industrial action?
4. What type of action would you like to see?

• There were 42 respondents
  • 26 were BMA members
  • 31 were GP partners
  • 28 would consider participating in industrial action
  • 8 requested undated resignations as the next step