Seventeen providers from a range of government and non-government funded disability, health, and social service organisations attended the one hour providers' forum.
For analyses of sociodemographic associations with service user evaluations, we included service users only if they could be mapped to an out of hours provider with known organisational type, had provided data on all sociodemographic variables included within the model, and provided a response for the question being investigated.
A predominant theme expressed by GPs related to constraints within the system provided by the local private company owned out-of-hours provider.
This has largely been adhered to by the new 'Out of Hours' provider, b) demonstrating the need for a robust system of providing injectable palliative care drugs out of hours (including opioids).
Last year, private out of hours provider Harmoni was found to have just one advanced nurse practitioner providing out of hours GP cover to up to 250,000 patients.
The one-hour provider discussion was characterized by active discussion with multiple roles and perspectives; the group reviewed the model to confirm accuracy, and discussed potential local (internal) improvements to medication communication.
Location of the practice is the most important factor deciding which out of hours provider is used.
We were thus not able to ascertain for individual practices and service users whether they would be contacting an out of hours provider through the NHS 111 helpline or through the previous method of using a telephone number to directly contact an out of hours GP provider.
Table 1 shows the sociodemographic characteristics of 106 513 service users (from 7492 practices) who reported that they had attempted to contact an out of hours provider on their own behalf or for someone else in the preceding six months and were mapped to a practice with known provider organisation type.
10 Whereas there is a paucity of evidence regarding the clinical performance of different types of out of hours provider, recent data indicated that the average cost per case was virtually the same across organisational type, with commercial providers seeing the fewest cases per head.
In Stockport the individuals and organizations involved the GPs, NHS FT, PCT, MBC, out of hours provider and the District Immunisation Coordinator (DIC)—have worked together for many years on a number of public health programs including vaccination: involvement with midwives on influenza started more than ten years ago.
