Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure improved out-of-hours GP provision in Tending.

Out of hours general practitioner (GP) provision in Tendring is commissioned by North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) as part of the out of hours service for the north east Essex district. The CCG advises that to assist in meeting the high demand for the service, the number of advanced nurse practitioners has been increased to complement and enhance GP cover. The out of hours service is currently running effectively, meeting 19 of the 20 performance targets around timing and ease of access to the service. The provider is narrowly missing the required standard for assessing urgent cases within 60 minutes, but it is implementing a detailed action plan to meet this target, which is being monitored by the CCG.

The CCG and its partners are always looking at opportunities to improve the service further. For example, the service has recently begun to use tablet computers to capture real time feedback from patients on the service they have just received. This feedback is used to identify ways to further improve the GP out of hours provision.