27 April 2016: New official figures published today detail all staff who provide health and care services within the GP practice workforce.
All figures are in Full Time Equivalent (FTE)3. Headcount and regional information are available for this report.
HSCIC must be quoted as the source of these figures.
The General and Personal Medical Services, England report 2005-2015, provisional, experimental is published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) and uses a new data source. Data are now collected directly from GP practices; previous analysis of GP workforce relied on collection of information through a census4.
The report shows that as at 30 September 2015 there were:
- 34,100 FTE GPs5 (excluding locums) working within primary care in England compared to a provisional estimate of 34,700 in 20146. This is an estimated6decrease of 1.9 per cent (657) since 2014
(Due to the increased accuracy of data now available on GP FTEs, the above figures are only presented for 20157., alongside provisional estimated FTE values for 2014, which have been derived to allow a year-on-year comparison.)
- There were 34,600 FTE GPs when including locums. This is the first time that this figure has been available as we did not previously collect data on locums
The report also shows that as at 30 September 2015, in the GP practice workforce in England there were:
- 15,400 FTE nursing staff, an increase of 2.2 per cent (336) since 2014
- 9,150 FTE direct patient care staff8, a decrease of 1.4 per cent (129) since 2014
- 63,700 FTE admin/non-clinical staff, 0.5 per cent fewer (328) than 2014
Responsible Statistician Kate Bedford said: "The change in scope of the GP report will enable us to provide a valuable overall picture of the NHS primary care workforce, with more detail than before.
"With the additional data on all staff that provide services within GP practices at the time of the collection, it is hoped that this information will shed light on current staffing numbers across all job roles in practices, allowing for better workforce planning.
"As with all of our experimental statistics, we welcome input and views on the methodology. These will be taken into account and should any refinements be necessary these will be updated in the next publication currently scheduled for September 2016."
Read the full report.