Out-of-hours care has worsened: GPs

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A total of 60% of family doctors think standards have dropped since Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) took control in 2004, a poll has found.

A new contract brought in that year allowed family doctors to opt out of providing round-the-clock care for patients in return for around a £6,000 annual drop in salary each.

But the current arrangements - which sees PCTs using a mixture of in-house teams, co-operatives and private firms - has come in for repeated criticism.

The poll and investigation, by Pulse magazine, found that 60% of 880 GPs surveyed believe the standard of services has declined since PCTs took over responsibility.

Just over one in 10 (12%) said they thought the service had improved. Almost half (44%) of GPs questioned said they had had patients complain about out-of-hours care in the last year.

Meanwhile, the workload of those GPs working out-of-hours had gone up 75% since PCTs took over.

According to Pulse, some GPs had said PCTs were relying on "telephone triage" rather than face to face consultations. Trusts were also increasingly using nurses rather than doctors, it said.

A Pulse poll of more than 3,000 patients also found that one in five had received "poor" or "very poor" care the last time they sought help out-of-hours.

Health Minister Ben Bradshaw said: "The NAO report on out-of-hours services (May 2006) recognised that patients' experiences of out-of-hours services were generally positive. Primary care trusts have a legal responsibility to make sure patients are well cared for during the out-of-hours period and are responsible for performance managing their providers in the delivery of out-of-hours services."