Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 7 March 2025 to Question 34376 on NHS: Finance, how the Carr-Hill formula applies to over-subscribed GP surgeries.

The Carr-Hill formula is designed to ensure that practices are reimbursed for their expected workload, that is, practices are paid more if their registered patients are expected to use services more based on past usage patterns of patients with similar characteristics. It considers a range of factors, including patient list turnover, to account for the fact that patients in their first year of registration in a practice tend to have more consultations than other patients.

Other factors considered by Carr-Hill include: the sex and age of patients; the additional needs of patients relating to morbidity and mortality and the Standardised Mortality Ratio for those aged under 65 years old; and unavoidable costs based on geographical area, specifically the additional costs of delivering services in a rural area, and in areas where staff costs are higher.

When general practice surgeries become over-subscribed, they may apply to their integrated care board to not accept temporarily any new patient registrations for specific reasons, including for example practices’ staffing or recruitment issues.