GPs to get £3,000 bonus for prescribing Mounjaro

GP practices in England will be offered average bonuses of £3, 000 a year to prescribe the weight-loss injection mounjaro, part of new incentive payments added to the GP contract starting in April. The change aims to widen NHS access to the drug as most current users obtain treatments privately.

Mounjaro eligibility and rollout

The incentive payments will apply only to Mounjaro. The injection began being made available on the NHS in 2025 but prescribing by GPs has been slower than expected, in part because initial access has been tightly restricted. The drug is initially available only to those classed as severely obese with a body mass index above 40 plus certain health conditions. That will be widened next year to include people with a BMI over 35, and eligibility thresholds are lower for some ethnic groups. An NHS planning estimate cited in the rollout expects around 220, 000 patients to be on Mounjaro by 2028 if phased access continues as planned.

How GP payments will work

The £3, 000 figure is an average annual bonus, with the size of the award depending on the size of the practice and the number of eligible patients prescribed the maximum allowed courses. Practices will also receive additional funding, worth about £1, 000 a year, for referring patients into weight-loss programmes. The scheme is being supported with ring-fenced funding of £25 million as part of the new contract arrangements. Incentive payments are a routine part of the GP contract and have previously been used to boost activity across a range of services.

Concerns and next steps

Health leaders have framed the move as a way to ensure access is based on clinical need rather than the ability to pay, noting that most people who currently use weight-loss injections do so privately. More than 1 million people are estimated to be using weight-loss drugs given by injection, and about nine in 10 of those users are paying for them privately. At the same time, medical experts caution the new payments may have limited impact because the drugs remain tightly restricted on the NHS and widening prescribing does not change eligibility criteria. Rollout so far has been described as patchy, and some professional advisers have warned that widening access could increase workload in ways that may not be sustainable and could raise expectations among patients who remain ineligible.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said weight-loss drugs can be a major improvement for eligible patients and stressed the importance of making access based on need rather than means. He also highlighted concerns about private purchasing and the risk of unregulated prescribers supplying unlicensed treatments.

Officials note that one of the other new-generation injections is not prescribed by GPs but is delivered through specialist NHS weight-loss services. The phased nature of the Mounjaro rollout has led planners to estimate the full programme could take many years to reach all those prioritised, and current implementation will be a critical indicator of whether the NHS meets its medium-term target for patient numbers on the treatment.

Key takeaways:

• GPs to receive average bonuses of £3, 000 a year for prescribing Mounjaro, with around £1, 000 extra for referrals.
• Initial NHS eligibility is restricted to the most severely obese; widening to lower BMI thresholds is scheduled next year.
• More than 1 million people use injectable weight-loss drugs privately; rollout on the NHS has been described as patchy.