20.08.14
Access to primary care
Source: Susan Nicholas
I believe that you should look at GPs providing their own out-of-hours services as part of their contract, as they used to do. The red herring of having to run a surgery after an on-call night is quite frankly poor planning of rotas.
If GP surgeries worked out the surgery times to cover more hours, it's no more difficult than doing off-duty rotas for a ward!
For example, a doctor on-call overnight could have the following day off, and cover an afternoon / evening surgery the next day. Of course they could also do it and cover seven days a week with their days off during the week not every weekend.
It's not rocket science and would bring primary care into line with other service provision!
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