§ Mr. BarnesTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will review Schedule 1, Part 1, paragraph 9 of the NHS (General Medical and Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations 1994 to assess whether the terms of service for doctors need to be revised to give patients better safeguards over having their names removed from general practitioners' lists; and if he will make a statement. [148153]
§ Mr. HuttonWe have already considered this in developing the new general medical services contract. This includes strengthened provisions requiring a practice to have reasonable grounds for removal and to advise the patient and primary care trust of that reason. Patients will be given warnings before such action is taken by a practice.
§ Sarah TeatherTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many general practitioner surgeries there are in Brent East constituency. [149902]
§ Mr. HuttonFigures collected by the Department are by primary care trust (PCT) and not by constituency.
Brent PCT has 78 general practitioner surgeries as at January 2004.
§ Sarah TeatherTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many general practitioner surgeries in Brent East constituency closed their list in the last 12 months. [149903]
§ Mr. HuttonWe do not routinely collect information on the number of closed lists.
§ Sarah TeatherTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many patients, in the absence of an available general practitioner, have been allocated to a locum doctor in(a) Brent, (b) London and (c) England. [149961]
§ Mr. HuttonA patient who experiences difficulty in registering to receive primary medical services may be allocated by the primary care trust to the list of a local general practitioner principal or personal medical services provider. Locum doctors, however, do not hold patient lists and patients may not be allocated to such a doctor.
322W
§ Mr. RosindellTo ask the Secretary of State for Health what the average cost of running a general practitioner surgery was in the last year for which figures are available.[150366]
§ Mr. HuttonThe average costs incurred by general practitioners in running their practices, based on the latest Inland Revenue Enquiry data for 2001–02, was £106,272.
§ Mr. BurstowTo ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list the(a) number and (b) rate of general practitioner vacancies in each (i) strategic health authority and (ii) primary care trust in each year since each was established. [149864]
§ Mr. HuttonThe Department's annual general practitioner (GP) Recruitment and Retention Vacancy survey started in 2000.
The estimated three month GP vacancy rate for England in 2003 was 3.4 per cent. and 2.7 per cent. in 2002. It is not possible to produce reliable estimates of the vacancy rate at strategic health authority (SHA) level or primary care trust (PCT) level. Estimated three month vacancy rates are not available before 2002.
Information on the number of GP vacancies for each SHA since 2000 and on the number of GP vacancies in each PCT for 2003, the first year data was collected at PCT level has been placed in the Library. This is a count of all GP vacancies that have occurred during each year. It will include existing posts that doctors have left and also new posts created to increase the workforce, even where they were filled very quickly. Thus, the increase in vacancies in part is a result of there being more posts overall, reflecting the Government's plan to increase the GP workforce.
§ Mr. RosindellTo ask the Secretary of State for Health how many general practitioner surgeries in Romford receive NHS funding. [150373]
§ Mr. HuttonThere are a total of 17 national health service general practitioner surgeries in Romford and all receive NHS funding.