CHANGES will be made to the out-of-hours doctors' service in West Somerset in the forthcoming months as part of a raft of alterations aimed at saving £2 million on running costs each year. From the beginning of May there will be a reduction in the number of hours a doctor will be available to treat patients at Minehead Hospital. Currently, a GP is on hand between 7pm and 10pm every weekday evening then from 9am to 1pm and from 2pm to 6.30pm and from 7pm to 10pm at weekends. Although the weekday arrangements will remain the same, the weekend hours will be cut by a total of five hours, meaning a doctor will be available from 10am to 1pm, then from 2pm to 5pm and again from 7pm to 10pm. A report to Somerset County Council's health scrutiny committee on Monday will explain the changes are part of a Dorset and Somerset-wide review of the entire out-of-hours service. Already, separate call centres for the two counties have been merged into a single centre based in Dorset, while patients continue to access services in the same way, namely through one local rate telephone number. Councillors will be told a GP will continue to be based in Minehead for three hours every evening, seven days a week and for six hours during the day at weekends. The report also reveals that a recent survey showed that 94 per cent of patients who had used the service rated their experience as either "excellent" or "good", with just six per cent branding it as "poor" or "very poor". The report states: "From the beginning there has been a continuous process of service development and improvement, including bringing the two countywide services together under the management of the Dorset Ambulance Trust. "It was anticipated that a high number of GPs would be required initially to support the out of hours services and that this number would decrease over time as the services became established and other healthcare professionals were employed to provide a broader skills mix." It concludes: "The out of hours service will always need to employ GPs to provide direct patient care, medical advice and clinical support for other healthcare professionals. "Patients will always have access to a GP should they need it, including through home visits where necessary."
