Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to improve out-of-hours primary care provision and to minimise dependence on accident and emergency facilities to provide primary care.

The NHS 111 service is becoming a core part of local urgent care systems and provides a vital service, directing patients to the right place including out of hours general practitioner (GP) services. Recent changes to the General Medical Services (GMS) contract mean GPs have to oversee the out of hours care their patients get and report any concerns they have. This is intended to drive up the quality of out of hours services.

Through the 2014-15 GMS contract the Government is promoting more personalised and proactive care management. It is intended that, by providing more personalised and proactive care for high risk patients, the number of patients that need to be admitted to hospital and the number of unplanned emergency admissions will be reduced.