We hear consistent feedback that GPs are often pleasantly surprised when they discover how much they are earning.
Are your GPs concerned about their patient numbers and earnings? Maybe their concerns aren’t justified. We have had many GPs and practices face this problem and the end of financial year is a great time to chat with your GPs about their billings over the past year.
Sometimes, we have GPs come to us concerned about their income and their patient numbers, but they don’t have the facts. In reality, they are earning very well in their current position. When GPs are feeling this way, it can have an adverse effect on your practice, such as increased competition and increased pressure on reception and management staff. This can then lead to a toxic work environment and higher turnover of staff.
Help your GPs to know the facts
Due to the nature of being a contractor, many GPs do not realise their actual take home income. We have heard this time and time again from the accountants and financial advisors that work with GPs.
If you’re not doing this already, give it a try:
- Export the data on GP billings, patient numbers, and appointments through your practice software
- Collate this data into a separate spreadsheet for each GP. You could set this up to show their billings per day, month, quarter, or year with days of the week
- If you can access data from previous years, we recommend doing this as it will show the GP their progression of income.
By doing this, at the end of the year or end of each quarter, the GP may realise that they are earning better than they thought! We have already seen two cases in the last few weeks where this has stopped a GP leaving their current practice.
Be transparent with your GPs and it will make for a much nicer working environment.