Over the last week I have had two clients that have asked me to look at the comparative costs of replacing a partner with a salaried GP or another partner. In recent years, with the increase in practice profits there has been a noticeable shift to replacing partners with salaried GPs. So much so, that the average list size per principal is currently 2,846, some 800+ more than it was 10 years ago.

But things change. The average principal is earning £133,482, and 25% of GPs have profit shares less than £110,000. The two clients that asked me to look into their partner v salaried GP both had GP profit shares of around £110,000 for 8 sessions.

To make the comparison, two stages are necessary, firstly to remove the employers superannuation from the partner’s profit share and secondly to add the on-costs onto the salaried GPs profit share.

In these cases, the £110,000 profit share reduces to £96,000 without the employers superannuation and assuming 8 sessions is full time this works out at £12,000 per session.

In both cases the sessional rate for the salaried GP was expected to be £8,500. 27% has to be added to cover the cost of the employers National Insurance contributions and the employers superannuation which brings up the cost to £10,795 and adding on the cost of membership of the medical defence organisation makes this £11,295.

So the differential for possibly 25% of GP practices is now only £705 per session. Of course there are other factors to consider, if practice income falls you can make a salaried GP redundant but not a partner. But, partners tend to be more committed to their practices than salaried GPs.

I see the return of the partners ahead.