GMC to check hospitals don’t give inducements
By Robin Stride
All private healthcare providers and Responsible Officers are facing a GMC quizzing to check their doctors are not being put in a position where they could be violating council guidance on financial and commercial interests.
This includes offering incentives that could affect the way independent practitioners prescribe, treat, refer or commission services.
The GMC is also exploring the possibility of recording doctors’ commercial interests on the Medical Register.
And it is reviewing the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) report which ‘highlights the potential for conflicts of interest to arise when doctors refer patients for medical treatment’.
The GMC’s measures were announced after the BMJ’s editor in chief Dr Fiona Godlee proposed all UK doctors’ financial interests should be included in a publicly available and searchable register, updated as part of annual appraisal.
She warned that ‘unless the GMC is serious about regulating doctors’ financial conflicts of interest, insidious inducement schemes will continue to reward private hospitals groups and some doctors at the expense of patients, the very people that the GMC is obliged to protect.’
As we went to press, the Federation of Independent Practitioner Organisations (FIPO) was awaiting judgment on its appeal to the Competition Appeals Tribunal (CAT) over the CMA’s requirement on publication of consultant fees. AXA PPP was awaiting results of its separate appeal.
Following CAT’s quashing of part of the CMA’s final report affecting HCA having to sell hospitals, and remitting it back to the CMA to reconsider and reach a new decision, the hospital group said: ‘We will continue our discussions with the CMA to ensure a correct analysis of the market.’
We will keep you updated on this website of any results of these appeals
GMC fees up £30
The GMC annual fee, paid by doctors with a licence to practise, rises by £30 – from £390 to £420 – from 1 April 2015.
- See ‘Turmoil over sell-offs‘