GMC announce new fees in effort to save £2.4 million

The new charges will primarily target international medical graduates (IMGS) who are currently working overseas and wish to maintain their GMC licence. The GMC has implicated the charges in a bid to generate an additional £2.4 million per year by 2017 and has arisen after an eight per cent increase in registration fees, which occurred in April.

GMC chief executive Niall Dickson, explained that the new fees were necessary because all doctors were subsidising services used by a minority of doctors. However, the British Medical Association (BMA) has warned that the introduction of new fees for IMGs may become an additional barrier which fuels the national workforce crisis that is currently affecting general practices.

The new charges incur a 75 per cent increase in two board exams, currently costing £620, but which will increase to £1070 by February 2016. Furthermore, additional administration fees have been created and a revalidation fee of £1,100 for retired doctors, or doctors working abroad who wish to remain on the GMC register.

The GMC stated: “The fee proposals will generate an additional annual income of around £1.6 million in 2016, rising to £2.4 million from 2017 onwards.

"Inevitably the introduction of new or enhanced fee levels may attract negative feedback from those having to pay higher fees but this would be mitigated through a clear and transparent communications campaign.”

Dr Krishna Kasaraneni, BMA equality and inclusion committee chair, said: “At a time when doctors are seeing real term pay cuts year on year, we must ensure that professional costs do not change disproportionally.

“While we are encouraged by the GMC’s continuing efforts to keep the costs of the annual retention down, it is important we ensure the fee rise for international medical graduates, who make a huge contribution to the NHS, does not become a barrier to them joining the NHS workforce and providing vital healthcare services in the UK."

Niall Dickson said: “We have a longstanding principle that our fees should cover what our services actually cost to deliver. In some cases they are no longer doing that. We also believe that where possible the annual retention fee paid by all doctors should not subsidise specific services which only a small number of doctors use.”

“We will review all these fees on a regular basis, to make sure we continue to recover our costs. We are also exploring the possibility of whether we can charge for offering some services internationally.”

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