UK’s biggest GP chain replacing doctors with less qualified staff

The UK's biggest chain of GP practices lets less qualified staff see patients without adequate supervision, an undercover BBC Panorama investigation has found.

Operose Health is putting patients at risk by prioritising profit, says a senior GP.

The company, with almost 600,000 NHS patients, is owned by US healthcare giant Centene Corporation. 

BBC Panorama sent undercover reporter Jacqui Wakefield to work as a receptionist at one of the UK company's 51 London surgeries. 

A GP working at the practice said they were short of eight doctors. The practice manager said they hired less qualified medical staff called physician associates (PAs), because they were "cheaper" than GPs.

Physician associates were first introduced by the NHS in 2003, so that doctors could deal with more complex patient needs. PAs are healthcare professionals who have completed two years of post-graduate studies on top of a science degree, as opposed to 10 years education and training for GPs. They support GPs in the diagnosis and management of patients, but should have oversight from a doctor.

Panorama gathered evidence that PAs were not being properly supervised at the Operose practice. The PAs told the undercover reporter they saw all sorts of patients, sometimes without any clinical supervision. They said the practice treated them as equivalent to GPs.

Prof Sir Sam Everington, a senior practising GP at an unconnected partner-run practice, reviewed BBC Panorama's undercover footage and said he was concerned for patient safety.

During the undercover investigation at the London practice, administrative workers also revealed a backlog of thousands of medical test results and hospital letters on Operose computer systems. 

One worker said they were tasked with getting through 200 documents a day, deciding which were important enough to be seen by a GP or pharmacist and which would be filed to the patient's records. One member of staff, worried about making mistakes said they sometimes used Google to help them work out what to do with the documents.

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Source: BBC News, 11 June 2022