General Practitioners: Indemnity Scheme Debate
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Lord Watts
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General Practitioners: Indemnity Scheme
Lord Watts Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord O’Shaughnessy
The noble Lord is right to highlight this issue. It is important to state that the rising cost of indemnity is not driven by a poor or worsening safety record but by the volume of activity and the rising cost of the average claim. Not only do we need to make sure that we reduce those costs, for example, by introducing a fixed recoverable cost scheme, we also need to reduce the number of safety issues so that there are fewer claims to bring in the first place.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, is it not the case that the costs are rising because GPs do not have sufficient time to see their patients? It is all linked to the shortage of GPs, which means that they have to see more patients for shorter periods.