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Medicine: Higher Education

Original answer

The Department does not hold information on the average cost to the taxpayer of training someone to become a doctor in the United Kingdom.

The Personal Social Services Research Unit at the University of Kent estimates within their report ‘Unit Costs of Health and Social Care 2014’, published March 2014, that the average cost in 2014/15 of training to become a general practitioner is £485,390 with the consultant training cost being £726,551. These figures reflect the pre-registration costs of tuition, living expenses/lost production and clinical placements and the post-graduate costs of tuition and replacement costs not the average cost to the taxpayer.

The answer was corrected by Ben Gummer (Conservative)

on Monday, 2 November 2015 on behalf of the Department of Health.

Corrected answer

The Department does not hold information on the average cost to the taxpayer of training someone to become a doctor in the United Kingdom.

The Personal Social Services Research Unit at the University of Kent estimates within their report ‘Unit Costs of Health and Social Care 2014’, published March 2014, that the average cost in 2013/14 2014/15 of training to become a general practitioner is £485,390 with the consultant training cost being £726,551. These figures reflect the pre-registration costs of tuition, living expenses/lost production and clinical placements and the post-graduate costs of tuition and replacement costs not the average cost to the taxpayer.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

4761

Session

2015-16

Related items

Doctors: Training
Tuesday, 21 July 2015
Written questions
House of Commons

Subjects

Higher education Medicine Per capita costs

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk