Senior doctors have moved swiftly to defend Clinical Excellence Awards (CEAs) for NHS consultants following a renewed attack on the system.
Scottish health secretary Nicola Sturgeon has called for a freeze on CEAs for all consultants and for a UK-wide overhaul of the system.
In a letter to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the health secretaries in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Sturgeon argues for the existing scheme to be replaced with a “fairer” system that recognises the contributions of a range of practitioners.
She has also written to Ron Amy, chairman of the Doctors’ and Dentists’ Review Body, calling for a freeze both on both the cash value of the 2010-11 CEAs and the number awarded.
She said CEAs are outdated and should be reformed on a four-country basis to avoid undermining the competitiveness of any one country when recruiting consultants.
“We are in a difficult financial climate at present and the pay of already highly-paid NHS staff should not be increased,” declares Sturgeon.
The BMA has written to the Department of Health setting out why CEAs are an important part of consultants’ remuneration.
Paul Flynn, deputy chair of the BMA’s consultants committee, said they would be lobbying very hard to persuade the DH that the time was not right for a wholesale review of the scheme. He said: “CEAs are the best way to encourage excellence and innovation and that is what they are there for. To take them away from the profession would be a demoralising blow.”
Stephen Campion, chief executive of the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association, said: “The issue is that the NHS is getting good value for money for providing recognition where it acknowledges that excellence is being achieved.”
Since 2003 the scheme had been refined by the Advisory Committee on Clinical Excellence Awards. CEAs were now allocated against national criteria and were closely monitored, said Flynn.
Ian McKee, an MSP and former GP who has been leading calls in Scotland for CEAs to be scrapped, said: “In Scotland 500 of the highest paid health service workers are sharing between them an extra £28 million a year at a time when the country is in financial crisis.
“There are a lot of people both inside and outside the medical profession who cannot understand why people receiving six figure salaries then need shed loads of money on top of that.”
He said the system, devised 61 years ago by Aneurin Bevan, to attract highly paid private doctors into the NHS, was now an anachronism and there were many different types of NHS healthcare professionals who were doing excellent work which should also be rewarded.
Around 60 academic GPs receive CEAs but McKee said a new scheme was now needed for this group to encourage bright GPs to work in academic medicine.
He said: “I might be painted as a bit of a poacher turned gamekeeper but I am a dove in this. Both Lib Dem and Labour spokesmen in Scotland have been criticising Nicola Sturgeon for not getting rid of the scheme altogether. I haven’t heard any good arguments for distinction awards.
“I don’t see that the distinction award system encourages anything other than greed quite frankly.”
Lewis Morrison, deputy chairman of the BMA’s Scottish Consultants Committee, said: “Distinction Awards not only attract the best doctors to Scotland, but by promoting innovation and research they can also bring economic benefits.”
Why not replace them with the sort of bonuses bankers get - and guaranteed before doing any work at all? If they are ‘good for The City’, they surely must be good for the NHS!
This is a purely political move. La Sturgeon knows that getting the four countries to work together on this is about as likely as Geoge Galloway becoming PM. So, nothing actually happens, but she gets to look good, and the Daily Mail gets its lazy rich doctor headline.
Should she inadvertently be partially successful and just get the scheme stopped in Scotland, I suspect it will become difficult to attract new consultants north of the border, or to keep the ones they’ve got.
DOI: I’m a higher award holder.
Amazing isn’t it.
You’d never guess we were coming up to an election.
Bankers break the back of the country - yet the politicians fawn over them and ‘bail them out’. Wonder where the politicians feel their future careers may be once they don’t get re-elected.
Politicians claim for dove cots and moat clearing - and then criticise doctors for working hard and getting appropriate remuneration……..something of the pot calling the kettle here?
If the NHS wants value for money then the first target should be the extraordinary waste spent on management consultants in both hospitals and especially in PCTs. They are not a bad thing per se - but are a knee jerk reaction to any problem and before the recommendations of one lot have even been looked at the next lot of managment consultants are in.
Promoting and rewarding excellence in healthcare delivery is surely something which should be further developed not stopped. Perhaps an even higher proportion of pay should be linked to excellence (just as we are increasing not freezing the value of CQUIN payments).
There are definitely parts of the current system which are unfair. This includes insufficient review of existing awards (some older consultants seem to have collected high level national awards as a right of passage which does not reflect their current performance or commitment). There is definately a ‘wait for your turn mentality’ and prejudice against younger dynamic high fliers. The application process is also unnecessarily burdonsome. I would support tweaking the system not freezing it or stopping it.
Why don’t we start by scrapping it in scotland, and see how well it goes down there? Consultants north of the border don’t need them anyway as all their kids’ university tuition is free. Have yet to see what devolution has done for those of us who live in england.
DOI - I’m not a higher award holder, but I want to be
She is missing the point. Wales abolished CEAs when the new contract was introduced - spreading the money around over ALL consultants according to length of service. A much fairer way to my mind and it keeps those ‘greedy GPs’ out of it!