MORE than half a million Scots will have their out-of-hours access to GPs restricted under a deal struck between the Scottish Government and doctors.
Thousands of patients will only be able to book an out-of-hours appointment once a month and thousands more will be restricted to appointments once a fortnight, despite a promise to deliver extra GP sessions every week.
And family doctors, who ear
n an average of £90,000 a year, are being offered an extra £1,000 to start delivering evening and weekend sessions before July.
The details of the finalised deal for GPs' opening hours have emerged just days before family doctors are expected to discuss strike action.
Campaigners and critics were furious at the development, accusing the Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon of failing to deliver her promise to patients.
In February Sturgeon said practices would open their doors outwith office hours each week in return for £9.5m of new money.
But last night she admitted agreeing "a number of flexibilities" to the deal.
GPs opposed the original move, which they said would be of no benefit to the chronically sick or the elderly. Family doctors were angry that the deal had been imposed on them and that they will lose money if they do not deliver extra opening hours.
Scotland on Sunday can reveal the latest details of the deal mean small practices will receive cash for opening their doors to patients outside normal working hours just once or twice a month. The move affects over half a million patients from all over Scotland whose GP practice has fewer than 3,000 patients on its books.
Many more will have no access at all – if GPs accept a £6,000 cut in funding for not providing the service.
Yesterday the leader of Scotland's family doctors, chairman of the British Medical Association's GP committee Dr Dean Marshall, said he had won the concession after warning officials that most of his colleagues were on the verge of rejecting extended hours.
Marshall said: "In recent discussions with the Scottish Government we have managed to make extended hours more do-able for practices.
"We said that we did not think the vast majority of GPs would do it, but that if they made some changes, then GPs could do it," he added.
"But we still don't think the arrangement is fit for purpose. It won't improve things for patients because we still won't be able to give them the range of services they need, like blood tests."
Those with fewer than 1,000 patients will only be required to provide a weekend or evening session once every four weeks. The move affects around 32,000 patients.
Those with between 1,000 and 3,000 patients only have to offer the extra clinics once a fortnight. This move affects almost 490,000 patients in hundreds of practices across the country.
