Exclusive NHS England has extended the contract for the national GP mental health support service, after a controversial proposal to cut funding.
NHS England has extended the contract for Practitioner Health by a further 12 months to March 2026 while a review into all mental health services continues, Pulse has learned.
In April, NHSE said it would no longer fund the service to take on new registrations from hospital doctors, and that it would review its offer to all staff groups in the long term.
However, NHSE was forced to U-turn on its plans to axe new secondary care registrations following strong criticism from the profession, including from the BMA and the Doctors’ Association, who called the decision ‘short-sighted’ and ‘cruel’.
As a result, the whole service was extended by 12 months until March 2025 while a review was carried out. Practitioner Health has now confirmed to Pulse that the service has managed to agree a further extension of 12 months.
This means the service will continue providing treatment to healthcare professionals, including GPs, who are mentally unwell – across both primary and secondary care – until March 2026.
Ms Warner told Pulse: ‘We are really pleased to have this further extension and hope that the NHSE review into staff access to mental health support will demonstrate how Practitioner Health can support the workforce in the long term and provide a secure future for our service.’
But Professor Dame Clare Gerada, a GP and ambassador for the service, said they are ‘still in the same limbo’ while NHS England’s wider review is ongoing.
She told Pulse that the extension is ‘good news’, but there is now ‘uncertainty’ for the service – which employs around 190 members of staff – as March 2026 is ‘only 18 months away’.
Professor Gerada said: ‘It’s the largest single physician health programme in the world – it’s a world leader. And instead of saying congratulations, well done, we say “well you’ve got 18 months of funding”.’
She said ‘so many people’ have told the Practitioner Health team that the service is ‘life saving’, and it is particularly important as it offers confidential care to doctors and other health professionals.
‘We know that doctors, especially GP partners, don’t access care unless they are unbelievably assured that it’s confidential and that they won’t see somebody they know, which, if you have local services, won’t necessarily happen,’ Professor Gerada added.
Practitioner Health is a self-referral service and offers treatment for a range of mental health and addiction issues, supporting health professionals to remain in or return safely to work.
Registrations data, seen by Pulse, showed that 5,764 health professionals signed up to the service in 2023/24, compared with 3,548 in 2020/21.
In the first five months of this financial year, Practitioner Health registered 2,300 professionals, of which 40% were GPs.
The service allows self-referral from:
- Primary and Secondary Care Staff in England where there is a genuine reason why they cannot access care confidentially e.g. due to the seniority of their role, or the team they work in. This includes:
- Doctors and Dentists in England
- Doctors & Dentists in the Isle of Man
- Doctors in Guernsey
- Doctors in Jersey
NHS England confirmed the contract extension, saying staff wellbeing is a ‘crucial part of the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan’.
A spokesperson told Pulse: ‘To ensure we maintain continuity in the provision of mental health treatment services for primary and secondary care staff, we have notified the supplier of our decision to extend the current contract with Practitioner Health for a further 12 months to 31 March 2026.’
Last year, Pulse reported that around 5% of GPs in England were accessing mental health services via NHS Practitioner Health – despite the service only intending to reach between 0.5% and 1% of GPs when it began nationwide in 2016.
A recent study which looked at GP burnout found that services such as NHS Practitioner were invaluable and that ‘there is room to expand rather than shrink’ the service in order to ‘provide genuinely holistic support’.
In 2016, NHS England announced it was investing £16m in mental health support for struggling GPs, as part of a new national service, representing a major victory for Pulse’s long-running Battling Burnout campaign.
翻译：
Why would they stop funding this? Why would it only be funded for another year? Why are things coming out of NHSE called an “offer”. This service is excellent. Why is it under threat?