The Department of Health should halt their review of training funding as it threatens to cut millions of pounds from junior doctor training, the BMA claims.
The review of the Multi Professional Education and Training Levy (MPET) which will decide the future of how NHS training funding is distributed is currently underway and changes could start rolling out as early as April 2010.
The review deals with the funding of both undergraduate education and postgraduate training for all healthcare workers, and is seeking to better reward excellence in medical education. MPET is likely to be replaced with a tariff-based system where the funding follows the student or the trainee.
But, the BMA’s junior doctor committee passed a motion at its recent meeting expressing serious and urgent concerns in the principles and assumptions underpinning the review.
It is calling on the Department of Health to postpone implementation until all the information in the MPET budget is made available for external independent review; all the research relating to the review is made public; and, the underlying funding principles for external review and stakeholder agreement are explicitly stated.
It is also calling for full and meaningful engagement with all stakeholders in all stages of review and decision-making and for the use of quality metrics.
Fears concern proposals to cut the money paid to trusts for the provision of undergraduate medical education. Current funding of between £10,000 and £100,000 a year for each student is to be replaced with a flat rate of £40,000.
Funding that trusts receive for the salaries of junior doctors is also likely to be re-allocated to fund only the education and training element of posts and not the service contribution.
Dr Shree Datta, chair of the BMA’s Junior Doctor Committee, is concerned the review will make it more expensive for hospitals to employ juniors.
She said: “We are seriously alarmed that the impact of this review has not been thought through. The idea that the NHS could press ahead with this as early as next year is simply dangerous.
“Fully trained doctors don’t grow on trees and the Department of Health needs to be very careful that they don’t end up making the training of doctors so unattractive or the funding system so unstable that hospitals no longer want to do it.
“The time has come for this review to stop and for the Department of Health to listen to the serious concerns of the medical profession.”
Read more news stories on MPET.
The rationale for the MPET review was outlined in High quality care for all: NHS Next Stage Review final report.
