05 April 2018

Dai Lloyd AM  

Chair, Health, Social Care and Sport Committee

National Assembly for Wales

Cardiff Bay 

CF99 1NA 

Out of hours services

Dear Dai,

As you may be aware, Royal College of General Practitioners Wales has concerns about the provision of out of hours services. Gaps in rotas have made political and media headlines, and caused public concern. Out of hours needs to be an attractive place to work and we have concerns that this is not the case at the moment.

In Wales we talk about shifting resource to primary care, but when a patient is unable to access an out of hours service they are more likely to contact secondary care through the emergency services.

RCGP Wales believes there are immediate steps that could be taken to improve the situation. These include all out of hours organisations adopting home triage arrangements, an increase in the number of call handlers, the redirecting of patients to other parts of the health system at first encounter and a recognition by health boards of the key role out of hours services place across the health economy.

We would welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues with the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee to establish constructive ways to improve out of hours provision in Wales.

Best wishes,

Rebecca Payne.

Dr Rebecca Payne

Chair, RCGP Wales