‘Inadequate’ service may get NHS help

Paramedics and nurses may provide support to a troubled provider of an out-of-hours GP service in Somerset.

The NHS urgent and emergency care system will be called on to help Vocare if it gets ‘very busy’, the Clinical Commissioning Group said.

In August, the service was rated ‘inadequate’ by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) and placed in special measures.

Vocare said it was working closely with Somerset’s CCG to deliver ‘the level of services required across Somerset’.

A fortnight ago the group said it had considered cancelling its contract with Vocare, branding the out-of-hours GP services as ‘unacceptable’.

The NHS requires all out-of-hours services to see 95 per cent of emergency cases within one hour, urgent cases within two and less emergent within six.

While Vocare has 100 per cent rating from handling emergency cases, its scores for urgent and less urgent home visits have fallen as low as 67 per cent over a recent six-month period.

The firm said it acknowledged that ‘historically our service delivery has not met the standards expected and designed by people in Somerset’ and it remained ‘100 per cent focused on the improvement plan’ agreed with the CCG.

Ed Ford, chair of the CCG, said: “When out of hours service starts to get very busy they are going to be required to notify us so we can ask the hospitals, the ambulance service, the district nurses to take some of that activity away from them to see that patients are seen in a timely fashion.”

Derek Prentice, from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said: “"I'm appalled but I'm afraid I'm not surprised.

"It's becoming an all too common story around the country when services that have been privatised fail and then other NHS services have to pick up the remnants of that and try to provide the kind of care and attention that patients come to expect.