A new contract with GPs, accompanied by an extra £40m investment, will make it “easier” to get a doctor’s appointment, Northern Ireland’s health minister has said.
Robbie Butler has secured an agreement with GPs more than a year after family doctors withdrew some services in protest over a lack of adequate funding.
Dr Frances O’Hagan from the British Medical Association (BMA) said the £40m would be used to hire more GPs and receptionists to increase capacity in surgeries.
However, she said the investment was only “a start” and was “by no means all that we need” in order to address all of the demands that GPs are facing.
The total in-year value for the 2026/27 General Medical Services Contract is worth approximately £17m.
The Department of Health (DoH) said it had committed the extra £40m over two years for “measurable improvements in patient access and primary care activity”.
O’Hagan argued the “money that’s spent in Northern Ireland in primary care is woeful compared to what it is anywhere else in the four nations”.
“We are currently spending less than 5% of the [health] budget in primary care, for us to provide 95% of the consultations,” she told the BBC’s Good Morning Ulster programme.
“It is well recognised that a working budget – that is good for patients – is around 10%, so we’re about half of what we should be.”
O’Hagan, who chairs the BMA’s Northern Ireland general practitioners committee (NIGPC), suggested it was a small sum compared to the size of the population.
“If you’re looking at £20m per year… I mean, we’ve two million patients,” she said.
“That’s £10 per patient, per year. In reality what is that going to provide you?”
