GP Earnings and Expenses Estimates, 2020/21

Arrangements in place between April 2020 and March 2021

Funding of £10m was advanced to practices to meet Covid related expenses, along with a further £10m to pay for practices to remain open during Easter and May public holidays in 2020. No practice received less than £4,000 from the £10m with the rest distributed via formula share. Practices who spent their allocation were able to draw down further sums to fully meet eligible expenses as required. Eligible expenses included Covid-related equipment or infrastructure changes; staff and partner costs to cover sickness absence and staff and partner costs to pay for additional Covid-related work in the practice¹. These advance funding arrangements were largely brought to a close in March 2022 and a reconciliation exercise carried out for any unspent money. The exception to this is arrangements to cover staff and partner sickness absence which remained in effect.

An Escalation Framework was put in place at the start of the pandemic to enable practices to respond to capacity challenges by ceasing aspects of activity such as Enhanced Services. While protection arrangements for this were locally rather than nationally agreed, practice income streams were generally maintained by health boards during periods when Enhanced Services were suspended².

Practice vaccination income was also protected in 2020/21 (and 2021/22) with an approach to influenza vaccination delivery that provided historic funding levels in exchange for a specific time commitment towards vaccinating by the practice rather than numbers vaccinated, in recognition of the difficulties Covid posed to practice delivery of vaccinations³.  

Practices also played a role in the Covid vaccination programme which had an impact on practice earnings and capacity during the phases of practice involvement. This was generally restricted to vaccinating the most at-risk patients in the early phases of the vaccination programme and was therefore a more restricted role for practices than in other parts of the UK, with delivery of the rest of the vaccination programme carried out by Health Boards⁴.

​​​​​​Table 2.1: GPMS contractor GPs - mean earnings, expenses and income before tax by contract type, Scotland, 2019/20 and 2020/21

^Note:

^{1. Statistical significance relates only to the fact of a year-on-year change in income before tax. See 'Statistical significance explained'.}

Dispensing and non-dispensing GPs

Table 2.2: GPMS dispensing GPs - mean earnings, expenses and income before tax by contract type, Scotland, 2019/20 and 2020/21

^Note:

^{1. Statistical significance relates only to the fact of a year-on-year change in income before tax. See 'Statistical significance explained'.}

Table 2.3: GPMS non-dispensing contractor GPs - mean earnings, expenses and income before tax by contract type, Scotland, 2019/20 and 2020/21

^Note:

^{1. Statistical significance relates only to the fact of a year-on-year change in income before tax. See 'Statistical significance explained' .}

Median gross earnings, total expenses and income before tax

Table 2.4: GPMS contractor GPs - median earnings, expenses and income before tax by contract type, Scotland, 2019/20 and 2020/21

^Note: 

^{1. The median figures are all lower than the mean figures in Table 2.1 which indicates that there is a relatively small number of contractor GPs with high earnings increasing the mean figures.}

Breakdown of expenses for contractor GPs

Table 2.5: GPMS contractor GPs - breakdown of mean expenses by contract type, Scotland, 2020/21

Table 2.6: GPMS contractor GPs - breakdown of mean expenses by dispensing status, Scotland, 2020/21

^Notes:

^{1.Further expenses breakdowns are published in the Excel Time Series, available under Resources on the Overview page.}

^{2. The average expenses in the ‘Other’ category for dispensing GPs are almost ten times the size of those of non-dispensing doctors. This is the largest variation in expenses categories between the two dispensing types and is to be expected as this category includes the costs for drugs.}

Table 2.7: GPMS salaried GPs - mean earnings, expenses and income before tax by contract type, Scotland, 2019/20 and 2020/21

^Note:

^{1. Statistical significance relates only to the fact of a year-on-year change in income before tax. See 'Statistical significance explained'.}

Median gross earnings, total expenses and income before tax of salaried GPs

Table 2.8: GPMS salaried GPs - median earnings, expenses and income before tax by contract type, Scotland, 2019/20 and 2020/21

^Note:

^{1. The median figures are all lower than the mean figures in Table 2.7 which indicates that there is a relatively small number of high-earning salaried GPs increasing the mean figures.}

Table 2.9: GPMS combined GPs - mean earnings, expenses and income before tax by contract type, Scotland, 2019/20 and 2020/21

^Notes:

^{1. Statistical significance relates only to the fact of a year-on-year change in income before tax. See 'Statistical significance explained'.}

^{2. The figures for combined GPMS GPs have shown an increase in income before tax each year since 2015/16.}

Table 2.10: GPMS combined GPs - median income before tax by contract type, Scotland, 2019/20 and 2020/21

^Note:

^{1. Median income before tax estimates are all lower than the means presented in Table 2.9, indicating that a relatively small number of high-earning salaried GPs are increasing the mean figures.}