Doctors hit back in ‘out of hours’ care row

The British Medical Association accused him of having a “simplistic” analysis of the issue after he linked a rise of four million people attending A&E each year to changes to GPs contracts.

Speaking to Age UK’s annual conference in London, Mr Hunt said: “The decline in the quality of out-of-hours care follows the last government’s disastrous changes to the GP contract, since when we now have four million more people using A&E a year compared to 2004.

“We must address these system failures – and look at the causes rather than just the symptoms as happened too often in the past.”

Asked whether he thought GPs should take back responsibility for out-of-hours care, Mr Hunt added: “I have put the issue on the table because I do think we have an issue with the quality of out-of-hours care.

“I haven’t said how we’re going to address it because there is a lot of work we need to do over the coming months to work out the best way of addressing this.

“The point we have to get to is where the public have confidence in out-of-hours care.”

Dr Mark Porter, chair of council at the BMA, said: “There is no doubt that the NHS is under intense pressure. Spending on healthcare is squeezed, patient demand is rising and staffing levels are often inadequate.

“The Government’s analysis of where responsibility lies for the huge and increasing pressure on emergency care is completely simplistic. Singling out individual parts of the health service and engaging in a blame game is unhelpful and misses the point.

“Ministers should be engaging positively with healthcare professionals to improve and maintain services for patients, rather than demoralising NHS staff who are working harder than ever with fewer resources, wherever they are in the service.”

The union has written to Mr Hunt asking for an urgent meeting to discuss the issue.

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