Consultants' cash rewards 'unfair'

12 April 2012

The system for rewarding consultants with extra cash is unfair and discriminatory, a medical expert has said.

Aneez Esmail, professor of general practice at the University of Manchester, said performance-related pay in the form of the Government's Clinical Excellence Awards should be overhauled.

Scrapping the system, which currently allows consultants to earn awards worth up to and above £71,000 on top of their basic salary, would entitle every single consultant to a pay rise of £10,000 a year, he said.

Writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (JRSM), Prof Esmail said the system did not reward team effort and cost millions of pounds a year.

Furthermore, the awards were "unfair, discriminatory and not suitable for the modern NHS", he added.

Despite reforms designed to make the awards more transparent and accountable, most winners were white, male doctors working in high-profile specialties, he continued.

"During the 2004 round, bronze awards were granted to 259 white consultants (of 19,020 eligible) and 20 to non-white consultants (of 3,049 eligible).

"Simple analysis of the differences in proportion between white and non-white consultants receiving awards shows that, overall, a non-white consultant was still two times less likely to have been awarded a bronze CEA compared with a white colleague."

The Clinical Excellence Awards came into force in 2003/2004, replacing the Distinction Award Scheme introduced in 1948.

The awards were designed to reward excellence in areas such as delivering clinical services, patient experiences, managing staff and research. But Prof Esmail said the awards only recognised individual efforts, when other clinicians and nurses also deserved praise.

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