A GP out-of-hours provider covering 300,000 patients has been running overnight shifts without any GPs on the rota.
NHS Doncaster CCG said its out-of-hours provider FCMS had struggled with a shortage of GPs, forcing it to staff shifts with only nurses and other healthcare professionals.
It said that the patient service had always been ‘guaranteed’ and the other healthcare professionals had ‘access to GP advice’ – but the LMC has said simply meant GPs at home picking up calls from other healthcare staff who were running the service on their own.
The provider also admitted that in two instances over the past four weeks, there was no GP on-call whatsoever.
For full article see Pulse Today 1 September 2016