Funding for general practice has been falling since 2018,1 and the only new money available has been through the primary care networks—groups of practices covering 30 000-50 000 patients. Money has been provided in the form of the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) to pay the wages of pharmacists, physiotherapists, paramedics, physician associates, and a list of other allied healthcare staff—but, until last week, doctors weren’t included.This omission has had several unfortunate consequences. The main one is that, although there are fully qualified GPs who need jobs—and patients crying out for GP appointments—practices can’t afford to hire those doctors. Instead, they settle for other workers (provided at no cost to the practice) who can do elements of the GP role with varying degrees of safety and efficiency. The government, when newly elected in July, promised to allow some of the ARRS money to be used to employ doctors, and last…
