Medical examiners

The salaried GP minimum employment standards provide guidance for employing GPs in secondary care settings. This provides a framework for the employment provisions which employer can enhance as required.

As medical examiners may have some out of hours responsibilities, which is not included in the minimum employment standards, employers using this contract will need to ensure any out of hours element is taken into account.

The pay circular includes a salary range for individuals employed on this contract so appointments should be made within this range.

Employers may use the 2021 specialty doctor contract to employ GPs in medical examiner roles. 

GPs are less likely to meet the eligibility criteria for the specialist contract but this could be used if they are eligible.

These are national contracts and therefore include established provisions for pay and out of hours working.

Alternatively, an SLA between the GP practice and the secondary care provider may be established. The practice will pay the individual for any work undertaken in the examiner role and recharge any costs to the NHS trust.

In this example the GP would not be directly employed by the secondary care provider.

While we would always encourage employers to use existing contracts wherever possible, there may be circumstances where employers decide to make local variations to national contracts when employing GPs in the role of medical examiners. Any variations which go outside the national framework or pay range would be considered a local contract.