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GPs reject call to take over out-of-hours care
Doctors at BMA conference vote almost unanimously against proposal to place them back on call
at evenings and weekends
Secretary of state for health Jeremy Hunt called the 2004 move to relieve GPs of responsibility for
out-of-hours care 'an historic mistake'.
GPs yesterday overwhelmingly reiterated their opposition to taking back responsibility for providing
out-of-hours care, with some predicting that many older family doctors would quit if that was imposed on them.
About 400 delegates representing Britain's 40,000 GPs almost unanimously rejected a call at a
British Medical Association conference for family doctors in England to once again become responsible
for looking after ill patients overnight and at weekends, as they were until 2004.
The vote, at the annual conference of the BMA's local medical committees (GP branches), came after
the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was reported to want GPs to go back to the earlier arrangement.
Dr Richard Vautrey, deputy chairman of the doctors' union's GP committee, said: "There was a very strong
view that this would be the last straw for large numbers of GPs, if they were forced to become the provider
of last resort and be on call overnight and at weekends, on top of their normal workload.