Today, we are launching a consultation for the General Medical Council that aims to bring healthcare professional regulation into the 21st century.
The consultation will provide a basis on which to tackle inefficiencies, slow processes, and bureaucratic barriers to change, thereby enabling faster, fairer and more forward-looking regulation. This is necessary for more effective protection of patients and the public.
For years there have been frequent calls from regulators, professions, and the public to make healthcare professional regulation more modern and efficient. These were reflected in recommendations by the Law Commission in 2014 and further substantiated by responses to the regulating healthcare professionals, protecting the public, policy consultation in 2021.
The principal objectives of the draft General Medical Council Order 2026 are:
To introduce a modern and agile regulatory framework for medical practitioners, physician associates and anaesthesia associates in the United Kingdom.
The GMC will be able to consult and amend its rules more efficiently as these will no longer require Privy Council approval. This will allow GMC to respond to external events in a timely manner which should lead to swifter and stronger public protection.
To provide the GMC with enhanced flexibility to set standards for education and training in different forms, for example formal teaching or digital learning and settings for example, clinical settings or community based settings, which will ensure high quality for all educators and learners.
To provide a duty on the GMC to hold a single register, rather than multiple registers as it does currently. The register will be clearly divided into parts for each profession the GMC regulates. This will make it easier for the public and patients to find and understand registration information about the GMC’s registrants.
To reform registration powers so the GMC can amend requirements flexibly, ensuring swifter adaptations to workforce needs and regulatory developments.
To overhaul the fitness to practise process to make it swifter, fairer and less adversarial, thereby strengthening public protection and improving the experience for all parties involved. This will further support the work GMC has already done to eliminate bias in its fitness to practice processes.
To establish a framework which may be used for future reforms to the other healthcare professional regulators, enabling faster and more consistent cross-regulator outcomes.
The proposed legislation also delivers several review recommendations which pertain to healthcare professional regulation.
The noble Lord Mann’s review into antisemitism and other forms of racism in the NHS recommends implementing a number of measures to strengthen the safeguards relating to healthcare professional regulation.
These include the GMC retaining its existing right to appeal fitness to practise panel decisions to the courts, strengthening the powers of the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care by permitting them to require information from regulators, strengthening the PSA’s appeal rights, and allowing the PSA to request that specific fitness-to-practise decisions made by case examiners are revised. These measures will strengthen the oversight of the regulatory system and demonstrate the Government commitment to stamping out racism and discrimination at all levels of the healthcare system. Work is under way to finalise a range of further recommendations from the Mann review, which will be shared in due course.
The consultation also seeks views on recommendations 1 and 9 of the Leng review which recommended that the roles of “Physician Associate” and “Anaesthesia Associate” be re-named “Physician Assistant” and “Physician Assistant in Anaesthesia”, respectively, to ensure clarity for patients.
The proposed UK-wide changes laid out in the consultation are crucial in ensuring the GMC is fit for purpose and can ensure protection of the public to the best of its ability.
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