Publication, Part of Primary Care Workforce Quarterly Update
Primary Care Workforce Quarterly Update, 31st March 2022, Experimental Statistics
On Thursday, 16 June, an additional Excel file was included under Resources on the Overview page, presenting Primary Care Workforce, England - full-time equivalent (FTE) GPs, September 2021 to March 2022. See the Using This Publication page for more information.
19 May 2022 09:30 AM
NHS geography updates
There have been changes to the NHS England and Improvement regional structure since this release. From 1st July 2022, Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) were established as statutory bodies replacing CCGs and STPs. From the Primary Care Workforce Quarterly Update, 30 June 2022 publication, data is instead aggregated to Sub-ICB Location, and ICB level. These geography updates also involved boundary changes, with some practices and Primary Care Networks (PCNs) moving to different Sub-ICB Locations and ICBs than they would previously have been situated.
In order to have a consistent and comparable time series at regional level, the collated Direct Patient Care (DPC) FTE CSVs for all periods back to September 2021 were reproduced as part of the 30 June 2022 release, with practices, PCNs and Sub-ICB Locations remapped to reflect this latest structure. National totals are unaffected by this remapping but some figures at Sub-ICB (previously CCG) and ICB (previously STP) levels may differ to those previously published.
All regional bulletin tables and CSVs presented here reflect the old structure. Users are encouraged to use the remapped CSV files released with the 30 June 2022 publication for historical regional collated DPC FTE figures.
1 July 2022 00:00 AM
Introduction to Primary Care Workforce Quarterly Update
Summary/Overview
In May 2022 we released the first quarterly update to the existing Primary Care workforce publications. These updates bring together staff working in general practice with those in Primary Care Networks (PCNs) using data collected by the National Workforce Reporting Service (NWRS). Data will be updated for different staff groups at different points during the quarter as it becomes available. Where appropriate, additional data sources will also be incorporated for some staff groups.
Background
NWRS data provided by General Practices and Primary Care Networks (PCNs) is being combined to give a complete as possible picture of the workforce in primary care for all staff groups. For GPs, this will allow data on infrequent locums to mature (due to the known time lag between activity and reporting) to be included in the GP figures each quarter. As data on GP locums takes two months to mature, the release of GPs will follow the release for other staff groups.
However, there are known gaps in the completeness of NWRS data. Most notably, at present not all PCNs are providing valid data using the NWRS tool. Triangulating with additional data sources can help provide as full a picture as possible of the primary care workforce. Therefore, we have also used data from the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) to provide an enhanced view for staff in the Direct Patient Care (DPC) group, which may help bring reported FTE closer to actual figures.
Data entered into the NWRS by general practices and PCNs are combined and then compared to reported FTE in the ARRS claims data. Through a series of rules, a collated figure is created for each DPC job role and reported on a quarterly basis under the ‘Experimental Statistics’ badge. The results of this analysis are presented in the Primary Care Workforce, England - collated full-time equivalent (FTE) net change since March 2019 - Direct Patient Care staff Excel bulletin tables and the PCN-level CSV. Net change is presented in the bulletin tables since ARRS claims can only be made for additional staff recruited since March 19, and monitoring therefore tends to consider changes net of the baseline.
Last edited: 25 August 2022 2:48 pm