Source: The Times Of India
By Paul Gallagher
Hundreds of general practitioners (GPs) are being recruited from India to help fill the growing demand-supply gap in general practice and meet a UK government pledge to add 5,000 doctors by 2020.
Health Education England, the non-departmental body of the Department of Health responsible for NHS training, has signed a “memorandum of understanding” with a major hospital chain in India.
The deal with Apollo Hospitals will involve the transfer of up to 400 GPs to England but HEE said that the details “are still under discussion” according to Pulse, the primary care magazine.
The Chennai-based hospital chain, which employs more than 40,000 people and has a £500m turnover, offers a diploma in family medicine which is accredited by the Royal College of General Practitioners.
Apollo Hospitals said it signed the memorandum as a “starting point” to explore how both countries can benefit from “the mutual exchange of ideas and clinical staff in improving the education and training of healthcare staff” and patient care.
“These are initial discussions but we look forward to announcing the outcomes of this work over the coming months and years as it progresses.”
The move to recruit GPs abroad comes after doctors’ leaders claimed this week general practice is “crisis” and warned that the sector is nearing “saturation point”.
Workloads increased by 16 per cent over the last seven years as family doctors in England deal with more frequent and longer consultations while the rate of GPs has decreased, according to a major study in The Lancet.
The Government gave a pre-election pledge it would recruit an extra 5,000 GPs by 2020, but many doctors say Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt will struggle to meet it.
Dr Umesh Prabhu, former chair and current member of the British International Doctors Association executive committee and a consultant paediatrician in Wigan, warned that the Apollo deal was “a dangerous move”.