Catterick out of hours

Back on blogging after a break!

Some of you may have seen the article in the D&S about the changes to Catterick out of hours. In essence, calls placed after 2300hrs will be passed on to the duty doctor based at Northallerton (rather than Catterick) to deal with. If a patient needs a home visit or to be seen face to face, this will still be done by the doctor in Catterick.

The only change is that the doctor on duty at Catterick will not make the initial telephone call. This allows the Primary Care Trust to classify the Overnight Catterick duty as a 'sleeping' shift and so reduce the overnight payment to the doctor. The change will make no difference to the patients needing a GP after 2300hrs. The only difference we may see is that less doctors will be keen to take a pay cut to work at Catterick, and so the PCT will find it difficult to man this shift. Whether or not this will happen remains to be seen. The PCT is heavily in debt and we must try to make savings wherever possible in order to protect our services. The current OOH changes will only affect the doctors at present and the patients should not see a difference in the level of service provided at present.