The new Consultant Contract became available to all consultants from 1 April 2004. It offers the NHS a more effective system of planning and timetabling consultants’ duties for the NHS. For consultants it gives greater financial recognition as well as greater transparency about the commitments expected of them. For patients this means less tired doctors and services which reflects the needs of patients.
Since April 2004, NHS employers in NHS Scotland have been working with individual consultants to agree almost 3,500 individual job plans which set out the programmed activities for each consultant. Information on the implementation of the contract based on job plans that were signed off as of 31st October 2004 are available on the ISD website on tables B18, B19 and B20. The information provides a specialty breakdown for each Health Board and will be updated as more information becomes available.
Some issues relating to implementation remain and the Pay Modernisation Team are working with employers and the BMA to address these.
If you would like to contribute to this agenda or have a query then please contact the team on 0141 242 5851.
As the implementation phase of the contract concludes the Pay Modernisation Team will be working with employers to ensure that the benefits of the new contract are achieved for the NHS. The HDL on Delivering the Benefits of Pay Modernisation in Scotland has been published which outlines how Boards are expected to use the new contracts to help ensure national priorities and targets are delivered. Boards will be using examples from changes introduced through job planning and job plan reviews with consultants to demonstrate the progress that is being made.
A training resource has been made available for job planning and setting service objectives. Click here to download it or visit the Job Planning Training page for more details.
Further Information
For more information about the Contract please visit our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) page . If you have an enquiry about the Terms and Conditions of service you can email your query to Kevin Matheson at the Scottish Executive Health Department.
