Looking through the GP contract last night, I may have misread it, but there
seems another worrying part in 'Minor Injuries'. Basically GPs get a decent
income from minor injuries (retainer of £1,000, I think plus £50 per patient
seen) for operating an office hours service. At the end of it there is a bit
about PCOs should consider looking at funding of A and Es again in view of
the reduction of their work load (paraphrasing from memory). Again, worst
case scenario is GPs taking on all of the appropriate minor injury work in
office hours. Could mean a reduction of 10- 15% of attendances in most
departments. If a PCO tries to balance its books by reducing funding of A
and Es by 10-15% on the back of that there could be a problem.
At the very least, a major take up of this by GPs will obviously reduce our
office hours but not our out of hours workload, increasing the proportion of
our workload (and hence working time) at unsocial hours.
Matt Dunn
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