News

Call for practices to commission out-of-hours care

29-Sep-08

GP practices should be responsible for commissioning out-of-hours care, the NHS Alliance has said.

Last week’s damning Healthcare Commission review of urgent care confirms that GPs are best placed to ensure better integrated care, the Alliance argued.

Its chairman Dr Michael Dixon said it would be ‘impossible and unsafe’ to ask GPs to provide out-of-hours care themselves.

‘But that doesn’t mean they ever wanted to give up all responsibility for their patients,’ he said.

‘Practices should reclaim that responsibility. And PCTs should work with them to commission joined up services that fit the needs of patients — instead of expecting patients to fit into whatever the service decides to provide.’

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Comments

David Rose

29/09/2008

In our area the GP Co-OP were not given the OOH contract after tendering against a Private company....now PCTs who have found it "difficult" to provide any adequate service expect GPs to come to the rescue....??

anjan bose

29/09/2008

In our area the local Co Operative run by local professionals and giving a valuable service was not even selected but the OOh service was given to another company who cannot even provide thursday after noon cover

Why is the EOE or Government not taking action against such managers --why there is no questions asked

Yes we will still bail out provided the managers responsible are sacked

Rupen Kulkarni

29/09/2008

Everything that the DoH touches turns to dust. The PCTs award contracts to Private providers and guess what-- they choose the cheapest option out there \(usually, unless it is a GP Co-op) Funnily enough we have a out-of-county GP run company that is going to tee off from Oct. 08. They had cut down the number of GPs and were hoping to use ENPs until we raised concerns. Now some back-pedalling has followed. We will watch like hawks!!!

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