A spokesperson for the UUP said the GP conference decision was “reckless and ill judged”
A vote of no confidence in Stormont’s health minister by GPs is a “cry” to Mike Nesbitt to resume negotiations on funding general practice, a representative has said.
The motion was passed by the British Medical Association’s Northern Ireland Local Medical Committee Conference in Belfast on Saturday, in response to the minister’s move to impose the 2025/26 GP contract on doctors, despite them rejecting its terms.
The additional £9 million offered by the minister as part of the contract fell far short of the extra £80 million GPs said was required to stabilise general practice services in Northern Ireland.
READ MORE: Minister announces pay rise and back pay for health service staff in Northern Ireland
At the conference, delegates also voted no confidence in the Department of Health and agreed to examine options on how GPs could operate outside current NHS structures in the future.
The conference also agreed to consider further steps to ramp up the “collective action” that GPs announced in the summer in response to the contract imposition.
GPs are not performing certain functions that they had previously been providing.
Dr Frances O’Hagan, chairwoman of the BMA Northern Ireland GP committee, told BBC NI’s Sunday Politics programme: “The motion was brought up from the grassroots GPs to say that they wanted this motion to go through, a vote on a motion of no confidence, and it was very much on the back of how we were treated in May, and how negotiations were ended unilaterally and our contract was imposed.
“But I see it very much as a cry to say, ‘look, let’s get back around the table and rebuild that relationship’.
“Because that can only be good for patients if we get that relationship back on track and get back around the negotiating table.”
Dr O’Hagan said the vote to explore other options on how services could be provided outside NHS structures demonstrated a desire to find a workable “Plan B”.
“Outside the NHS may mean private, may mean a hybrid model, may mean working with a different structure inside the NHS as it is now,” she said.
“But if you look five years ago, you would have struggled to find a private GP in Northern Ireland.
“Now they’re popping up all over the place. So people are moving with their feet because they have to, because we are not in a position as GPs to provide the access patients want and need.”
She added: “The motion that we passed was to look at options for what we call a Plan B.
“But a Plan B is something other than what we have at the minute, which is Plan A, which is not working.
“We are not providing enough for patients, and that is exceedingly frustrating, not only for patients, but for us as well.”
On the prospect of escalating collective action to “level two”, Dr O’Hagan said vaccination programmes could be affected.
“Up to now, what we’ve done in collective action is stop doing other people’s work, so we’ve time to concentrate on our own work,” she said.
“If we can’t get back around the table with the minister, then collective action level two will start to ramp up, and that will be where we’re looking at things that we are currently funded to do, but actually we’re more or less doing for free, because we’re not being funded at an adequate rate.
“We’ll look at some of the vaccination programmes, (they) aren’t really paying us. I mean, some of them cost us money to run.
“So there’s different things that we do, for example, minor surgery and things that are extra, that are additional.
“They’re not part of our core contract, but are additional, but when you actually cost it out, we’re not being funded at a level where we’re actually making any money to do it.”
The Department of Health has been approached for comment.
Health Minister Mike Nesbitt’s party, The UUP, said the GP conference decision was “reckless and ill judged”.
An Ulster Unionist Spokesperson said: “The decisions flowing from the weekend conference of GPs were not only deeply disappointing – they were astonishingly ill-judged. As we enter into the winter months, it is now particularly galling to hear a leading Northern Ireland GP talking about ramping up their actions, including looking at the delivery of some of Northern Ireland’s critical vaccination programmes.
“This most recent escalation is particularly disappointing given that it is coming barely a week after the Health Minister, Mike Nesbitt, had managed to secure the necessary political agreement to deliver the long-awaited pay award for health workers – including an extra £12m just for GPs and their staff.
“At a time when the entire health service is under unprecedented pressure, the kind of theatrical and grandstanding gesture coming from some GPs and the BMA helps no one – least of all patients. It risks derailing constructive progress just as the Minister was beginning to make real progress to stabilise and reform primary care.
“The Minister won’t be distracted in the very slightest by the vote of confidence in him. What was far more alarming, however, was the vote taken at the same conference to explore moving outside the NHS. Such a proposition from GPs is reckless and utterly disconnected from the needs of the public. Our NHS is founded on universal access and free at the point of delivery; GPs openly floating the idea of moving away from it undermines confidence and does nothing to address the very real challenges facing primary care.
“To be clear, neither the current Ulster Unionist Health Minister, Mike Nesbitt, nor any other Ulster Unionist Health Minister, will allow the privatisation of primary care in Northern Ireland.
“The people of Northern Ireland deserve solutions, not stunts. It is time for GP leaders and their representative body to step back from inflammatory gestures and return to serious, responsible engagement. That’s what patients both expect and deserve.”
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