Practice managers to be included in £20,000 partnership scheme

NHS England is ‘working on’ a plan to include practice managers in the £20,000 ‘new to partnership’ scheme, which opened to applications for clinical staff last week. 

Speaking in a webinar, Medical director for primary care Dr Nikki Kanani said NHS England limited the scheme to clinical staff, initially, to get it ready in time for 1 July.  

‘But what we do want to do is extend the scheme and make sure our practice managers can be part of it as well, so we are working on how to do that. We’ll get those details out as quickly as possible,’ she said. 

A number of pharmacy partners have already signed up for the golden handshake-style payment, she added. 

NHS England said the scheme, which had been due to come in from April, gives eligible participants:

• a sum of up to £20,000;
• a contribution towards on-costs of up to £4,000 (for a full time participant) available to support establishment as a partner; and
• up to £3,000 in a training fund to develop non-clinical partnership skills.

At the time of the GP contract deal, NHS England said the payment was uncapped, but formed part of a £94m cash injection to address recruitment and retention issues in general practice.

NHS England had announced its intention to extend the scheme to practice managers earlier in the year but last week initial guidance for the scheme, which officially opened on 1 July but is backdated to 1 April 2020, excluded practice managers from the list of eligible roles.

To be eligible for the payment the new partner also has to:

• never have held a GP partnership before;
• hold a profit share in a legal partnership;
• commit to remaining a partner in a GP practice for five years (or pay back some of the money);
• deliver a minimum of two clinical sessions per week in their partnership practice;
• have signed a partnership agreement on or after 1 April 2020 and before the end of the scheme;
• have a minimum of two years remaining in their contract.

More details about the scheme are outlined here.

The article was previously published on our sister title Management in Practice